


Valley of the Shadow, Act II

by potionpen



Series: Subjectiverse (the truth is what i see it is) [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Civil War, Death Eaters, Death Eaters Being Death Eaters, Divided Loyalties?, Drama & Romance, Everybody is an unreliable narrator, Families of Choice, Good Death Eaters, Good Slytherins, Harry Potter was an unreliable narrator, Ministry of Magic, Multi, Occlumency, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Politics, Potions, Potions Masters, Riddle War I, Slytherins Being Slytherins, So read me like one of your Slytherin girls., Tom is creeptastic, Tug of war tightrope-walking, Women Being Awesome, Women being less than awesome, also: men, corkscrews and battering rams, read your chocolate frog cards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:55:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 229,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4385660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionpen/pseuds/potionpen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Britain, Summer of 1980.  The world isn't made of good people and Death Eaters—and that's true whichever way you cut it.  Prophecies have been spoken and heard, children born, Horcuxes hidden, and one Tom Riddle is losing his grip even as his power builds.  </p><p>Hogwarts is coming.  The first smoky tendrils of war are in the air, if you know what to look for, if you know how to see.</p><p>Sod all that.</p><p>This is Slytherin: family first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts (August 1)

**Author's Note:**

> As the title should indicate, this is not a solo/new piece—the original [Valley of the Shadow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566) post was just getting unwieldy and we came to a good stopping point. So if you're new, know you have entered in the middle.
> 
> But here's a reminder of the most important thing:  
>  **Canon Compliance** :  
> It is advised that the reader be familiar with the biography of Harry Potter written by Ms. Rowling. The reader should be aware that this seven-volume series was fact-checked by Ms. Skeeter rather than Miss Granger, and cannot be relied on in the matter of dates. Furthermore, Ms. Rowling's books are written from the point of view of the subject, and not only contain a distinctly pro-Gryffindor bias but largely confine themselves to what Mr. Potter saw, heard, assumed, and speculated.
> 
>  _This_ is a Slytherin story, and the truth is subjective:  
>  One moment and two people means at least two truths, and probably seven: yours, mine, Rowling's, what the video camera/pensieve would show, what Character A experienced, what Character A will remember... and the two to fifteen ways Severus will look back on it, depending on what kind of mood he's in, who he's with, and how hard he's occluding at the time.

Headmaster’s Office, Hogwarts (August 1)

“They _dosed us_!” James shouted, his face hot and red with fury.

“Well, my boy,” Dumbledore said mildly, “It does seem that you were given a potion under false pretenses, but Lily certainly knew she was taking one.”

“But she didn’t know what she was taking! I’ve never seen that white stuff before, even if she did take the same as I did. It could be anything! It could have, it could do things that won’t show up for years!”

Dumbledore sighed. “Madam Pomfrey has identified it, based on your descriptions, as a potion of Mr. Snape’s invention—”

“AH-HA!”

“Which she recognized because Mr. Rosier nearly managed to invalidate one of Mr. Snape’s OWL scores by giving it to him against her advice when Mr. Snape was himself in a somewhat distracted state of mind.”

Dumbledore’s voice was still mild, but it had those undertones that somehow made a fellow feel he ought, just maybe, to stop talking.

This being, however, important, James persisted. “If it was against her advice—”

Dumbledore sighed again. “At that point, the potion was unknown to her, and hadn’t been thoroughly tested.”

“And I suppose it has now? If it’s so ruddy safe, why isn’t he selling it? You don’t know what Snape was like at school, sir,” James told him. “I mean, he wasn’t the only way to get alcohol or potions outside of Hogsmeade weekends, but he was the only one who _always_ had some. And he _charged little kids money_ for tutoring them, Sirius said his brother said. Even in _Slytherin_ they don’t usually stoop to that. Sorry, Professor, but if Snape had something he could get away with selling, he’d be selling it.”

“According to Professor Slughorn,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully, “the hold-up lies (as, sadly, these things so often do) in an argument between the creator and his backers in the matter of marketing.”

James was almost sure he didn’t want to know, but he was _absolutely_ sure Dumbledore was going to tell him and there was nothing he could do about it. The best he could do was sneer, “That’ll be the Malfoys, I suppose.”

“Oh, I’m sure that if the Malfoys were his backers in this instance, Horace wouldn’t have heard about the difference of opinion,” Dumbledore smiled. “No, you see, this was the potion that Mr. Snape submitted to the Most Excellent Society of Potioneers last year as his application to join their number. This does give them some rights in the matter, of course, and Horace says Mr. Snape was initially perfectly happy to leave it to them. It should have been on the shelves eight months ago, but then they showed him the proposed labels. As I understand it, _that_ is when he brought the Malfoys in.”

“He’s just stalling because it’s got some horrible side effect and he knows everyone will find out once a lot of people start taking it,” James said firmly. “He wouldn’t give up eight months’ profit over the label; he never cares what his things look like.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure, my boy,” Dumbledore twinkled. “You see, he patented it under the name of ‘The Draught of Peace—’”

“Pretentious tosser,” James muttered.

“But the Society likes to promote their members. They would prefer to market it as ‘Severus Snape’s Sweetly Soothing Serenity Solution.’”

“…I want that label framed on my wall. Does it have fluffy white clouds and rainbows? Tell me there are daisies. And kittens. Kittens in windowsills.”

“This, I imagine, is why he’s willing to give up eight months’ profit,” underlined Dumbledore drolly.

“Yeah, all right,” James admitted. “Who’s winning?” He didn’t actually care. Well, not as such. You couldn’t help wanting to know who was going to win. And while he _absolutely wanted that label on his wall,_ and while he would never say it out loud, he was on Snape’s side on this one. On his wall, he could take it down when it stopped being funny and he was tired of seeing Snivellus’s name in his toilet. In the shops it would get out of control, if it was actually any good.

“I can’t say I’m following the matter carefully, but Professor Slughorn assures me that Mrs. Malfoy will win in the end.”

“I’d believe that,” he said sourly. “But back to the important point, _they dosed us!_ ”

“Mr. Rosier did, perhaps, err in favor of expediency over good manners,” Dumbledore allowed, “but I must say that any hospital orderly would do the same, if an expectant father intended to make an interference between his wife and her chosen birthing assistant. Of course, an orderly would have used a more forceful spell to remove such a man from the room entirely.” He lifted his cotton-puff eyebrows meaningfully.

James’s shoulders tightened. About the first thing Snape had done had been to try to get him out. If he’d been that set on exiling James and been able to convince the midwives he had a right to, what might he have done if Rosier hadn’t gotten in there?  

Was that what Rosier had been thinking?  He’d been the one to point out he and James were cousins, after all. Maybe that meant something to him.  Maybe he’d thought Snape would take it as enough of a win to leave off if James was incapacitated.  If that was it, he’d still deserve a hex or a punch in the face for sneaking high-handedness and _crippling James while his wife was screaming._ You couldn’t blame a vacuous nitwittoo much for being a complete idiot who didn’t understand what it meant to really care about a person. Not if he’d been trying to do something like the right thing.

Especially not one who was obviously failing at doing the right thing because the reason he didn’t know what it meant to really care about someone was that he’d never gotten closer to a real relationship than being the school broom before he’d gone out of fashion. He couldn’t hold that against Sirius’s cousin, when Sirius’s trail of exes tended to dislike all four of them and Rosier’s one-afternoon-stands had only ever seemed to greet him more cheerfully for a few days or go a little… sort of disturbed and motherly at the same time.

Whatever that was about, clearly Rosier had been _nice_ to them, and had been a lot more careful than Sirius had about making sure they didn’t pin their hearts on him. So James thought he did try to do the right thing. It wasn’t Rosier’s fault if he had to suddenly imagine what the right thing would be between people who actually loved each other, and had no experience. He thought he remembered Padfoot mentioning that Rosier’s parents had left him alone a lot, too, so he wouldn’t even have had them to look at for an example.

Which didn’t mean he didn’t need to be _forcefully educated about his error,_ but probably explaining it would do. Assuming he could get the nitwit to pay attention long enough. Maybe if James got him in a completely empty with painted walls instead of wallpaper and no windows, and kept it short.

“…Okay, but how sure is Madam Pomfrey she knows exactly what that potion really does?”

“My dear boy, you may owl the Society for a description of its effects yourself, if you wish. They’ll gladly send you those, although the recipe is still proprietary.”

He eyed Dumbledore’s robe buttons suspiciously, since it wasn’t actually Dumbledore he was suspicious of and he didn’t want to insult the old man by scowling at his face. “Well, what does he _say_ it does.”

Dumbledore smiled drily. “The Society’s description is rather floral, and Madam Pomfrey reports that Mr. Rosier initially told her it calms people. During the investigation, Mr. Snape’s description… let me see.” He beckoned at one of the glass cabinets full of books with his wand.

Instead of opening to deliver a book to him, as James had expected, it moved forward entirely, and to the side, and a scroll floated up from a hole in the floor. Not a ragged hole or anything. It was rimmed with a sort of feathery carving in some dark blue stone, a square gap about large enough to safely levitate a very large kneazle through, even if the kneazle was fighting madly. He stared at Dumbledore.

The old wizard twinkled at him as he opened his hand to receive it. “Mustn’t keep the confidential records on display, James. Now, let me see… ER declares… Expert witness GM asserts… ER intended, ER, ER, SS has no recollection, SS has no recollection, SS has no recollection, Expert witness PP testifies it both credible and likely that SS should have no recollection… ah. ‘The following is the testament of SS in his own words regarding exhibit A, an experimental potion of his own devising, which presents as a white nonviscous liquid, very slightly pearlescent, with silver vapour at room temperature: For a few hours, the drinker is inhibited from feeling disturbing emotions they otherwise would be—just the disturbing ones, the upsetting ones. It doesn’t seem to completely blot out sadness, and it doesn’t touch pleasant feelings, but it’s useful for when you’re too fussed to get anything done. Or when you need to think something through but it’s too raw.’”

“Well, that explains why they both had it on them,” he said darkly. “They’re probably both addicts. Rosier’s off on a cloud _all the time_.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” Dumbledore said lightly, sending the scroll back into the floor and the cabinet back into place. His funny silver instruments chimed as their cabinet rolled.

“That sounds like you think you should know,” James said, maybe a bit more belligerently than he’d originally planned to. “And _he_ was talking like… he said he knew you’d be awake, and he said he’d been taking _private lessons_ with you.”

Dumbledore looked at him enquiringly.

James flushed. “Well, I’m sorry, sir, but it sounds a bit dodgy!”

“My dear James,” Dumbledore asked gently, “what on earth can be ‘dodgy’ about a talented young research brewer taking magical theory lessons with an alchemist old enough to be his great-grandfather, with whom he has a school connection?”

James flushed harder, but he bulled on. “What’s dodgy about it, Professor, is he started yelling about something else about half a second after he admitted it, like he knew I’d keep at him till he answered the question but he wanted to change the subject _really quickly,_ before I had a chance to think about it. And if all you two were meeting about is brewing theory, why would he know you were waiting up to hear about Lily? And why does everybody care when Harry was…”

He had to pause and shake off the goofy smile that was inappropriately creeping up his face because this was a bad time for that even if it was completely impossible to help it. “When Harry was born? Because Lily’s been mental over it all week, and she won’t tell me why, and then Snape was pretending he was just humoring her but then, no, he was actually upset about it, too, and Rosier didn’t look all that surprised Snape was upset, either, and they both were really concerned no one should find out he was born last night except you, and this morning the midwives don’t even remember the two of them were here, and _what is going on?!”_

Dumbledore sifted about in his sweets jar. He came up with a roundish sort of green thing with a rim on it, held it up to the light, and popped it into his mouth. He found another one, orange, and offered it to James. “Flying Saucer? They’re a muggle sweet; they’re rather good.”

James heroically didn’t tell him that everyone over the age of twelve, including the Puffies, knew he was stalling when he did that. He took the sweet. It was rather good.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer your question, James,” Dumbledore said slowly. “For one thing, I haven’t spoken to all the people I’d need to, to fully understand what is, as you say, going on.”

“All right, then, what’s _been_ going on,” James allowed, trying not to be exasperated at this obvious dodge.

“For another,” Dumbledore continued sadly, “it would be too great a security risk.”

“I—what?!”

“James,” Dumbledore said, all sympathy, “I don’t question your courage, or your loyalty, or those of your friends, and the tools you make for the Order are enormously useful. I thought you understood why making them has been the limit of your involvement.”

James stared. “I… We thought we were just making a stockpile,” he said blankly. “For the Aurors, and in case they were needed.”

“I do believe in being prepared,” Dumbledore said. He dipped his head as if it were an agreement, a concession, but his tone was too bland.

Then he smiled, though, a little sympathetic again, and explained, “My dear James, those of us who lived through the recent European war have learned our lesson. The wizard calling himself Lord Voldemort has not yet made any bold moves in his own name, but he has followers who have already proven themselves willing if not eager to do abominable things quietly and in the dark, and I do not believe him ignorant of their proclivities, and he has not checked them. The Order of the Phoenix must, perforce, operate on a need-to-know basis. No one may know enough to unwillingly betray all. If I must someday lose any of you in the worst of ways, the one thing above all that the enemy will learn is that their worst will gain them little.”

James said something like, “Erg.” Then he cleared his throat and tried again, and managed, “Oh.” And, “Er… are we doing anything about the in-the-dark things? I mean, we are, right? I’m not asking what, but we are, right?”

Dumbledore’s brow darkened, but it wasn’t because James had questioned him or anything, he just looked frustrated and sad. “We’ve been trying. There isn’t enough of a pattern.”

He wanted, really badly, to ask more, but obviously he’d have to convince Dumbledore he and the lads should be let in on that part of things first. “I _don’t_ see why you’re not letting us help more,” he said. “Me and Sirius and Remus and Pete and Gid and Fab, I mean, not Lily right now, obviously. Sirius and Remus and me especially; we don’t have the kind of jobs where we’d have to answer to anyone for our time all the time.”

“Leaving the Prewett twins out of it, for the moment,” Dumbledore said, with a slightly pained, scolding look that said he’d really expected James to be able to think of all this for himself, “as good-hearted as they all are, I’m afraid your three good friends are exactly the sort of people about whom the Americans used to say ‘loose lips sink ships.’”

That was so blatantly wrong that James had to laugh. “If you think so, Professor,” he grinned, “it only proves how true it’s not.”

Dumbledore put his eyebrows up, interested and willing to listen.

James looked at him like he was crazy. “I’m not going to spill any secrets just to prove I can keep a secret,” he pointed out.

“Ah, stalemate,” Dumbledore sighed lightly.

“Look, if this is about that time Sirius and Sni—Snape got their potions mixed about who was in the Shrieking Shack, Sirius honestly didn’t mean to tell him how to open the door to a werewolf, Professor. They’d been tasting about fifty different flavors of vodka and we’ve got no idea what percent alcohol it was and he wasn’t keeping track of how many he’d had. He _really_ knows better than to do that now.”

“Sometimes I really do wonder what Horace is thinking,” Dumbledore murmured, grimacing very slightly under his beard. “The incident certainly didn’t fill me with confidence, but I’m afraid it’s more than that. You’ll admit, I hope, that your friend has a bit of a temper?”

“…Well, yeah.”

“And that his connections with some of those we suspect of being involved with the so-called Lord Voldemort are very personal indeed, however much both sides might wish and claim otherwise?”

“He’s _not_ connected with them,” James said hotly.

“My dear boy,” Dumbledore said, sitting back and steepling his hands fondly at James. “Tell me, what was your favorite thing to do with your father, as a child?”

James blinked. “Well,” he said slowly, “he said he was too old to go flying with me, but we used to on walks all over the place. And.” His gaze dropped. It felt almost too private to share with someone he wasn’t doing it with. “We’d, er, we’d make maps. Of where we went.”

Dumbledore sat up a bit. “Maps?” he asked sharply.

“Yes?” James’s foot dug at the rug in front of him a bit. Had Filch finally realized what he’d confiscated, given it up? He felt hot and skittish—but it wasn’t as if he could be given detention for it now, and it was hardly illegal, was it? It wasn’t Dark, it was brilliant, a masterpiece. Besides, _he hadn’t had his answers yet._ He set his jaw.

“A child’s maps, James? Or did you become good at it, as a grown wizard is good at his trade?”

“I’m good at it,” James said, shrugging. “I mean, don’t ask me to draw you a fjord freehand from memory without magic, but I’m good at it.”

“I’ll think about that,” Dumbledore told him, and it was, to James’s surprise, a promise. “And I’d like you to bring me an example.”

“Sure,” he shrugged again. He couldn’t do anything like the Marauder’s Map on his own, of course—that had been a joint project, it had needed all of them. But something ordinary and accurate, he could manage that. Barring hidden caves and so on.

“But to return to the matter. Suppose you had a falling-out with your father this minute, such that you both came to hate each other and want nothing to do with each other. Suppose that, a year from now, or ten years, you met at some gathering. Suppose he spoke wistfully to you of those days of walking together, do you imagine you would be entirely unaffected? Suppose he turned to your friends or his and spoke in spite of those maps you had made together, mocked your pleasure in them, mocked the skill you had taken pride in, told you he had burned those he had kept. It wouldn’t touch you at all?”

“My dad wouldn’t do that!” James cried, stung.

“No, no, of course he wouldn’t,” said Dumbledore soothingly. He leveled a penetrating look at James. “Can you say the same for all of Sirius Black’s relations?”

“His dad probably wouldn’t,” James said, trying to be fair even though he could already see where Dumbledore was going with this. “Or his cousin Andi and her family. And his brother probably wouldn’t _mean_ to. The rest of them, in a heartbeat.”

“And can you guarantee that Sirius would keep his temper? That none of them would be able to provoke him into saying things he shouldn’t?”

“Okay,” he surrendered, sighing. “Remus and Pete aren’t like that, though!”

“They don’t lose their tempers, no,” Dumbledore agreed, “but Mr. Pettigrew can be flustered, and he works in the Ministry, which is in it’s very nature a hotbed of gossip and maneuverings.”

“Not his office,” James pointed out.

“Well, perhaps not. Should he once draw attention to himself, though, the position would make him vulnerable.”

“Pete’s _really_ good at keeping his head down, though, Professor,” James said, smiling a little. He thought about explaining how often Pete had been treated as the next best thing to an innocent bystander for something he’d gotten Sirius plotting in the first place. He hadn’t come to spill Marauder secrets just because the statute of limitations had run out, though. “He roomed with Sirius and me with about a tenth the detentions, didn’t he?”

“True, true,” Dumbledore twinkled. “Quite sensible of Mr. Pettigrew, managing to stay out of trouble like that. Such good sense should be encouraged when possible, don’t you think?”

“…I guess,” James muttered guiltily. Pete, he knew, wouldn’t have wanted to be left out if the rest of them were doing it, but he wasn’t actually so sure Pete would have wanted James to get them all more involved in the first place. He didn’t hang back (much. Well. Anymore. Not far), but he was never the one to dive in whooping, either.

He didn’t push about Remus. He could guess what Dumbledore would say, anyway. Almost no one knew what Remus was, except the bloody Werewolf Registry. They might be legally required to keep that information confidential, but accidents could happen. Especially where almost-certainly-Death-Eaters who’d somehow never figured out that splashing gold around was tacky were involved.

James wasn’t sure Remus would have wanted him to try to get them more involved either, actually, at least not right now. Remus had been a bit occupied with trying to raise support for the wolfsbane potion project. He’d spent most of last week alternately trying to get his fellow werewolves to write letters (some dictated, all signed with their registry numbers, since absolutely no one wanted to use their names) and owling a brochure-thingy to, as far as James could tell, every wizarding door in Britain.

Including James and Lily’s. He’d asked Moony why one had been wasted on him, since he and Dad and Lily had all obviously already written the DRCMC separately to support more funding for the project (even though Snape was working there, which was very high-minded of James, he felt). Moony had looked at James with very bleary eyes and explained that The Valley was in the Godric’s Hollow listing under P. James had suggested it might be time Remus switched to coffee, at least at lunch.

In fairness to Moony, the house did turn out to be in the listing under both V for Valley and P for Potter. Still, unless Moony had wanted someone to tame his semicolons, there was really no reason to have sent James even one. He might have reached two more people whose mind actually could have done with changing with those copies. James had tried to get Zonko’s to put one in their window, but all he’d got out of it was a fatherly lecture on the separation of business and politics and the uneasy suspicion that the joke shop stocking Marauders Moon goods might just possibly be run by Slytherins.

“I guess,” he repeated now, more strongly, “but look, Professor. Okay, I can see about need-to-know and everything, but last night was _my wife_. And _my baby!_ I need to know!”

Dumbledore gave him what James could only think of as an Ah You’re So Young look. It was a _bit_ more sympathetic than indulgent, but it still made James bristle. “I’m afraid you don’t understand the term, James,” he said gently. “It refers only to what an operative needs to know to accomplish his part of a mission.”

James put on his most mulish face. “How about what an operative needs to know so he won’t start investigating on his own and maybe accidentally step all over things he doesn’t know about because you didn’t tell him about them?” he asked. “Because Snape was acting like he’s got secrets with Lily and secrets with you, and you keep blowing me off about this, sir, but I’m about a hundred and fifty percent sure he’s a Death Eater.”

Dumbledore sighed, looking stressed, and started hunting around in his sweets dish again.

“Look, would you for once hear me out, sir?” James pleaded.

For a moment, he thought Dumbledore was going to fob him off with a trust-me, again, but then he got a sort of calculating look instead. “James,” Dumbledore said slowly, “I have ‘heard you out’ on the subject of Mr. Snape many, many times before. Very nearly all of what the two of you have had to say about each other has troubled me. Shall I tell you why?”

“You’re going to,” he predicted gloomily.

Dumbledore smiled. “Yes,” he agreed, twinkling a bit, “I am. Now, as for Mr. Snape, I believe that what disturbed me is the same thing that made you so contemptuous of him from the very beginning: that when he was asked what circumstances brought him to the attention of his professors he never hesitated to detail them.”

“Grasser,” James agreed, lip curling.

“It isn’t quite the done thing, is it,” Dumbledore agreed ruefully. “I’m afraid that those of the faculty who didn’t sort Ravenclaw were generally rather inclined to think he was exaggerating. After all, a boy who’d be so dishonorable as to break that code would surely think nothing of being dishonest.”

James nodded firmly.

“He wasn’t, though,” Dumbledore continued, quite casually, “was he?”

James put on his don’t-know-what-you-mean-sir face.

Dumbledore nodded sadly, as if James had answered. “I should have remembered,” he said. “Boys who don’t grow up with friends—or, at least, with friends who are other boys—don’t learn those rules. They very often believe they should follow the rules adults give them.”

James shot him a confused look, because he was confused.

“Adults,” Dumbledore explained, “tell children to be sensible, yes? To tell an adult when they’re in difficulty. To spend their time on schoolwork more than play, to turn down ridiculous, dangerous dares like diving on one’s broom to within a foot of the ground or touching the Whomping Willow or giving Hagrid corkscrew curls in his sleep.”

“Never have any fun,” James translated.

“Precisely,” Dumbledore twinkled conspiratorially, and James grinned. “All boys know to ignore those rules, would you say?”

“Well, yeah!”

Dumbledore nodded. “Except for the ones that don’t.”

“You have to be pretty dim not to know school rules are just for when the teachers are watching, Professor,” James said skeptically. “No offense.”

“Oh, none taken, my boy, none taken. But perhaps you noticed that the girls only seem to follow adult rules? That not only do they exclusively follow those rules, but they recognize no others, and behave as though doing perfectly sensible things which _must_ be done, such as accepting a dare which is certain to land one in the Hospital Wing, are incomprehensible and foolish?”

“Well, they’re girls,” James said, shrugging.

“As a matter of fact,” Dumbledore said, “it has nothing to do with being girls, and everything to do with not growing up playing with boys. The ones who did, they understand perfectly well.”

“Okaaaay,” James tried, in a what’s-your-point tone.

“Tell me, James,” Dumbledore asked, reflective. “Have you ever noticed what happens when two boys try to be friends, and one is markedly cleverer than the other?”

“No,” James said, firmly and loyally.

Dumbledore’s beard twitched, and his blue eyes were warm, as well as amused. “How fortunate. Well, it can turn out well, it certainly can, if the more intelligent of the two is very patient, and the slower… let us say, respects him very much. It can be almost the relationship of an older and a younger brother. Wouldn’t you say?”

James’s foot dug into the ground, and he almost felt the skin on his neck twitching, but otherwise he kept himself from squirming. “I guess that could happen,” he muttered. “I don’t know if I’d say patient, but if someone looks up to you, you’ve got to look out for them.”

“Indeed you do,” Dumbledore agreed warmly, and sighed. “Alas, it didn’t happen that way in my own family.”

James blinked. “Your family, sir?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, quite untroubled about it. “My own brother was—and it’s no slight on him to say so, for in the absence of modesty I must confess to being a very capable scholar indeed—nowhere near my level academically. Don’t think he’s a stupid man, James! Aberforth is a very sensible fellow, and probably wiser than I.”

“I’m sure he’s not, sir,” James said loyally.

“Well, we all have our areas, of course,” Dumbledore said cheerfully. “But the eternal war between town and gown played itself out in miniature in our home. I’ve learned to appreciate him since, and he, more or less, to tolerate me, I think—”

James peered at Dumbledore to see if he was kidding, but he didn’t really look like it. Not sad either, but not like a bloke making a joke because it was embarrassing to talk plainly about how much you and other fellows cared about each other even if you were related. A bit philosophical, maybe. Mildly regretful, if anything.

“—But when we were children he scorned my every study hour, sneered at my achievements, scoffed at my plans, called my ambitions worthless—the term ‘airy-fairy’ was a favorite, as I recall—and harped incessantly about the way my time with my books kept me away from my responsibilities to our family, saying that even if my mother permitted it, it was selfish of me to indulge myself.”

James’s shoulders jerked back indignantly, his head rising. “I hope you hexed him!”

“Oh, my, no,” said Dumbledore placidly. “I told him that he was small-minded and grubby and would never amount to anything, and he would know when he had said something worth listening to because I would listen to it, and that the neighbors were beginning to comment on the amount of time he was spending with the goats.”

“…Er.”

“Quite. So you see, James, I know what I’m talking about when I tell you that a young boy who’s rather cleverer than the other children around him may well find it not only easier but more worthwhile to drive them off and spend all his time with ink and paper friends than loud, slow, irritating real ones who insist on games that aren’t interesting or edifying in the least. It leaves one at a distinct disadvantage, once one can’t avoid other boys anymore.”

“You seem to have done all right, sir, in the end.”

“What I mean,” Dumbledore said patiently, “is that you were angry with Mr. Snape from the beginning of your acquaintance for breaking rules he’d never learned were there. What continues to disturb me,” he added reflectively, while James tried to figure out why he was supposed to care about that, “is that he never _did_ seem to learn they were there. In Slytherin, where he should have been learning to navigate all manner of social codes. Of course, Mr. Snape is nothing if not obstinate, even at his own expense.”

“I’ll give him that,” James agreed sourly. He didn’t know whether Snape hadn’t understood or hadn’t cared that as long as he kept spitting in their faces they had to keep after him, and he didn’t care. The amount of trouble it had gotten him in with Lily was _phenomenal._ He might have gotten her to go out with him a year earlier, maybe even two, if the greasy moron hadn’t kept on challenging them.

“So much for the thing he did, over and over, to disturb me,” Dumbledore said. “But you did something, too, James, you and Sirius Black, over and over.” He smiled a little sadly. “In fact, it was just the opposite. It isn’t against the code to turn in one’s enemies for crimes—not to bring in adults if it’s the only way stop an enemy from hurting one’s fellows, doing harm above the usual rough-and-tumble that’s in the category of ‘acceptable and to be accepted manfully.’ But when you had accusations to lay against Mr. Snape that weren’t mere _ad hominum_ attacks, it was for reading the wrong books, brewing potions you thought suspicious, being with the wrong people, using unknown spells.”

“They were bloody creepy books and really horrible people,” James maintained.

“That may be, that may be,” Dumbledore nodded agreeably. “I should not like to know that any grand-niece of mine had crossed paths with Meredith Mulciber on a lonely night, or any of the young Lestranges. Still, I feel sure that, had you ever found the least proof that Mr. Snape had engaged in any real wickedness at Hogwarts, you would have let myself or Professor McGonagall know at once.”

“Well, he knew we were watching him,” said James sensibly. “He wouldn’t have risked doing anything himself. He just found out how to do things and told his mates.”

“I wonder, James,” Dumbledore mused, taking off his half-moon spectacles to rub, with a pained little sigh, at one eye. “Are you familiar with the term ‘confirmation bias’?”

“Never heard of it,” James said. “Professor, why do you want me to be all chummy with Snape?”

“Never that,” Dumbledore assured him drolly. “What I want to tell you is that while of course I will hear you out, I wish to remind you that I’ve heard all I need or care to of your and Mr. Black’s opinion of Severus Snape’s character. I know what you think him capable of, and what you think his opinions and ambitions are and what sorts of things he’s likely to do. You need not repeat yourself on those counts. If there is something of which you would like to convince me, my dear boy, you must hang your case on facts.”

 _“Oh._ ” James was relieved. For a minute he’d really thought Dumbledore was trying to talk him around to something, but no, he just wanted to make sure James wasn’t treating this like a schoolboy matter. “If you want me to put it all together like a case, I should put it all together, though,” he suggested. Maybe his mistake up till now had been to just to say what creepy things Snape was doing as they came up, without putting them all together in context.

He thought Dumbledore’s eyes flickered briefly towards the clock, thought he heard the smallest of sighs, but the old wizard agreed, “Yes, I suppose you had better.”

So he started back at school. He couldn’t remember all the details now, of course, but Filch would have plenty of records. There had been loads of times Snape had been seen reading books he had no business with, and sometimes he’d been caught using passes to the Restricted section that had been issued to other Slytherins. He’d spent a lot of time brewing _totally unsupervised_ down in the dungeons, and not always using Slughorn’s stores because he was being bribed to stay away from Slug Club meetings, either.

None of the potions had turned out to be really nasty, James had to admit, except in that they were the kind of thing you only tried if you were _breathtakingly arrogant_ because of what could happen if something went wrong, but some of them had used ingredients Snape absolutely should not have been able to get his hands on. And he _had_ been matey with Mulciber and Avery, and if he hadn’t bullied the girls and the muggleborns himself, he’d done his own sneering and never stopped them.

“You told me in May you’d been following Mr. Snape,” Dumbledore said mildly. “Does he see them still?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. So what?”

“Well, my boy, a half-blood living and sleeping in the same room with pureblood extremists would be foolhardy indeed to show enmity.”

James was unimpressed, and didn’t mind showing it. “There’s not telling them where to stick it and then there’s palling around with them,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” Dumbledore mused, “that did rather attract your attention to them, didn’t it? His making sure to be seen with them, I mean.”

“I—what?”

Dumbledore smiled harmlessly and picked another caramel cobweb out of the box. He offered James one.

“You’re saying he… wait, what? No.”

“Well, I haven’t any proof,” Dumbledore admitted, crunching, “but it is exactly the sort of thing Slytherins do. When he was trapped with the Slytherins of his year and with you, he was seen in public only with Mr. Mulciber, Mr. Avery, and Miss Wilkes.”

“She was a bit of all right,” James allowed, grinning a bit. “Mouthy piece of work, for a midget.” And she wasn’t a midget like Flitwick was, just short enough that they would have encouraged Pete to go after her if she wasn’t a Slytherin. And if she hadn’t been enough of a corker to eat him alive and leave him dazed in a puddle on the stairs. Fit, too, and pretty eyes. Not the same hazel as James’s, where there were different colors in them, but an almost uniform golden-brown—not like a bird or a cat, either, but like toffee, or butterbeer.

“Just so. But now that he has freedom of movement and can avoid who he likes on most occasions, rather than being forced into proximity by halls and classrooms and so on, he chooses to distribute his leisure time very nearly exclusively between Mrs. Malfoy and her husband, Mr. Rosier, and Regulus Black. All of whom he scrupulously avoided at school, outside of their mutual common room. Exactly, as I say, the sort of thing that Slytherins do, except in that it rather lacks subtlety.”

“Well, Narcissa Black’s not exactly your blooming English Rose either, and dodgy is not the _word_ for her husband,” James said, unimpressed. “And Reggie Black might be an okay kid at heart, but everybody knows his cousin Bellatrix has had her hooks in him for years.”

“Ah, if only we all knew what Everybody knows, and how he knows it,” Dumbledore philosophized. James had always half-suspected he was being a bit sarcastic when he did that. “Do go on.”

“Okay, well, after he either got bored with small-time bullies or was done with manipulating his sworn enemies into attacking his secret enemies for him—”

“Would you blame him for that?” Dumbledore asked curiously.

“Er, why wouldn’t I?”

“You do seem to feel rather strongly that Messieurs Mulciber and Avery deserved your attentions on their own merits,” Dumbledore pointed out.

“Well, yeah,” he agreed, “but I don’t like being used, and pretending to be friends with someone and siccing a mutual enemy on them is _not on._ ”

“It does make an interesting moral question,” Dumbledore reflected. “I’ve often wished we could keep a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher long enough to put a stable curriculum in place. I don’t like to interfere with my teachers, but we do suffer, rather, from each professor trying to stuff each year’s minds full of what practical defenses they feel are most important before they go, and almost no one giving a thought to ethics.”

“…Right,” James said warily. “Anyway, like you said, I _have_ been keeping an eye on him.”

“And have you evaded his notice, while keeping your eye on him?”

He shifted. “Er… Rosier says not… but he could have been bluffing!”

Dumbledore took off his wire-rims and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did Mr. Rosier say?” he asked wearily.

“He said they’ve got wards on their street that make a record somewhere when I’m on it.” Dumbledore kept looking at him, and he squirmed and broke. “And that Snape takes a memory for their pensieve when, er, we see each other.”

“Oh, James.” Dumbledore sighed, and asked, “And have you gone on ‘keeping an eye on him’ since Mr. Rosier told you this?”

“Well, that was just a couple of weeks ago,” James explained. “They were away, and then Lily was here. Otherwise I would have. I mean, Rosier could have been bluffing, and either way, if I stop, there wouldn’t be anyone keeping an eye on Snape. Because Sirius wouldn’t be able to just watch, and Pete’s busy and Remus wouldn’t do it and besides, if there _are_ wards like that they’re probably set for the lads, too, anyway.”

“May I ask a question?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Why Mr. Snape?”

“Sir?”

“You know that Mr. Mulciber and Mr. Avery incline towards active malice, and you say that ‘dodgy is not the word’ to describe Mr. Malfoy. I can understand your not wishing to pursue Sirius Black’s family, but why not them?”

“Well, the security at Malfoy Manor’s too good,” James said regretfully. “We might be able to get in once, maybe, but a stakeout’s not an option. And those two are just small beer, Professor. No one’s ever going to tell them anything important, or rely on them for anything complicated. Snape’s ambitious and he’s a plotter and he’s all the Dark kinds of creative. Following him could _get_ someone somewhere.”

Dumbledore nodded judiciously. “Well-reasoned,” he agreed, “if prejudicial. Well, go on, then.”

James went over Snape’s movements again, as best he could remember, in more detail over the last month or so. “I’ve got a log at home,” he finished, “but you see what I mean, Professor? He just keeps disappearing and not showing up any of the places where he knows people!”

“I see that you’ve handed him every legal right to duel you,” Dumbledore sighed.

“Fine by me,” James declared.

“James, has it occurred to you that when he hasn’t been visiting Mrs. Malfoy or young Mr. Black or in Diagon Alley he might have been shopping elsewhere, or gathering ingredients for personal brewing, or visiting his parents, or going to the cinema, or the theatre, or to concerts?”

James gave Dumbledore a dubious look. “I suppose he might be getting ingredients sometimes,” he conceded. “Those other things don’t sound like things he’d do. Too muggle for a Slytherin.”

“Not encouraged among Slytherins, indeed,” Dumbledore said patiently. “A half-blood’s lingering taste for activities not encouraged by other Slytherins might explain why he chooses to slip away to do them privately.”

“Oh, come on, sir, you don’t think that,” James said skeptically.

“Whether I think it or I’m playing Devil’s Advocate, it’s a counterpoint that you would do well find an answer to before you put this case of yours to anyone but myself,” Dumbledore said, opening his hands in a there-you-have-it gesture.

“Well, Sirius and I wanted to start us working on trying to follow him when he apparated,” James said defensively, “all the way back in May. But then we all reckoned it might make a fuss if it went wrong, and you didn’t seem to want the Order to be the ones to start anything.”

Dumbledore looked a little faint, as if a curse had just passed over his head and singed his hair. “Which of you realized this?” he asked. He sounded a little faint, too.

James tried to remember. “Er… Remus said we’d promised you could rely on us and it wouldn’t be reliable to follow him without checking with you even if we could figure out how. And Pete said what if it went wrong, something like that, and then Sirius said you were, what did he say, he said we could handle it if things went wrong but you wouldn’t want any messy incidents, he didn’t think. And it’s my strict policy to encourage Sirius when he’s being, you know, not-insane, even when I sort of hate it, so that was when we came to talk to you and Moody instead.”

Looking pleased, now, Dumbledore said, “You were all quite right. It would be disastrous to give the Death Eaters any way to paint themselves as victims, any way at all, even the narrowest of footholds, if your assumption had proved correct. I’m glad that the four of you can work together responsibly, and not merely brilliantly.”

“Do you need some water, sir?” James asked, pleased himself but a little uncomfortable. “Or a cup of tea? It looked like you took a bit of a turn there, for a second.”

“Tea wasn’t quite what I was thinking of,” Dumbledore said placidly, “but never mind, never mind. Well, thank you for putting it to me so clearly, James.”

“You see what I mean, then?”

Dumbledore pursed his lips a little, meditatively. “You mean several things at once, I think. Whether I agree, which I think is what you’re asking, depends upon which of them you’re referring to.”

James paused. He supposed that was sort of true, that he meant a few things. He meant that Snape couldn’t be trusted, and that Snape was definitely a Death Eater and it was obvious even if wasn’t 100% proven, and that therefore James absolutely did need to know why the vampire bat had been acting like he had secrets with Lily and with Dumbledore. It was all the same thing, though. He said so.

Dumbledore chuckled. “Not quite, my boy, not _quite._ I do see that I can’t let you leave with unsatisfied questions.”

“Well. Good.” James sat back, mollified.

He had a weird sense of being almost-threatened, though. Or an almost-sense of being threatened. Or maybe the phoenix was staring between his shoulder-blades again. Sirius said that when James got jumpy in Dumbledore’s office for no reason, Fawkes was usually looking at him. There weren’t a lot of birds that ate deer, and James had never heard that phoenixes did, but the big guy might have the right kind of beak. He’d never checked.

Or maybe Prongs just felt Fawkes was a forest fire waiting to happen. Kettleburn usually managed to haul all his classes up to see Fawkes on a burning day at least once before they graduated, and it had been _fast._ No warning at all, except that he’d looked ill all day before it.

“So,” Dumbledore said, sort of cheerfully, as if it were an exam question he expected James to do well on, “now that we both understand that other has a point—I, that you must know what has been hinted at or you will look for answers on your own, and you, that I have been right in thinking that you lads, for all your enthusiasm, present me with something of a security problem, what are we to do?”

“You didn’t say _I’m_ a security problem,” James pointed out, not completely impressed by this.

“But of course you are, my boy,” Dumbledore said, blinking at him in perplexity. “Or are you telling me that you _don’t_ tell your friends everything, and wouldn’t?”

James hesitated. Of course, they mostly did tell each other everything—or at least, they mostly knew everything about each other; they didn’t have to _tell_ each other everything because you only had to tell people about things they weren’t there for. Come to think of it, they didn’t actually _tell_ each other all that much, except for what they’d been working on separately for Marauders’ Moon.

Nobody was particularly interested in Pete’s job, even if he lamely insisted it was interesting sometimes. Nobody was really interested in Moony’s jobs, either, except for whether they were volunteer or paying because that mattered to him. They _were_ sort of interested in when he was talking to other werewolves, but they understood that he wasn’t comfortable sharing a lot of that.

James and Pete actively did not want to know whether Sirius and Remus were pretending they were just friends or pretending they were too lazy to go try and find anyone outside their flat to pull this week (it usually amounted to squabbles over how long tea was to be brewed and what was to be done with wet towels and Remus whacking Sirius over the head with a rolled-up newspaper either way), and Pete was completely (and smugly) mysterious about his alleged girlfriend. As for James’s, everyone kept talking over him very loudly when he tried to explain how amazing Lily was, especially since she’d made them all understand where they’d have to start looking for their peckers if they succeeded in coaxing actual details out of him.

“I don’t tell them things that are, you know, just about me and Lily,” he said uncomfortably.

“James,” Dumbledore said kindly, giving him that I-see-right-through-you look, “I don’t wish to put you in a position you can’t live with. We’re not discussing domestic matters. You appear to feel, although I confess I’m still not entirely certain why, that Severus Snape is, in some way, your job. You want to know why he behaved as you say he did last night. If I tell you what I can on that matter can you, in conscience, keep it from your friends? Since their circumstances make them more vulnerable than yourself to being forced or tricked by clever and subtle dark wizards?”

He thought about it. It felt like letting the lads down, but was it really? Padfoot would be upset at first, of course, but James was sure he’d say that if that was what James had to do to find out what Snivvy was up to, James should do it. Pete would be hurt at being left out, but probably not much if he wasn’t the only one. And Remus simply wasn’t going to care what Snape was up to until James got proof it was heinous, which, after two years of trailing the wily slime on his own, James was starting to think he wasn’t going to get without a new lead.

“Yeah,” he said firmly, eventually. “Yeah, they’d trust me for that.”

He thought he caught a flash of what looked almost like pity in the clear blue eyes, but that didn’t make any sense. He must have imagined it.

“Then you know what I must ask of you,” Dumbledore said, and looked at him expectantly.

“…I do?”

“James, four years ago, I asked a boy who believed he’d had the whole of his future clawed away from him, for a joke, to let me seal his lips to silence, to protect the safety of the boy he thought had been the weapon in his attempted murder.”

James started to protest that that wasn’t what had happened at all, but Dumbledore raised his hand.

“That was what he believed,” he said. “He could think nothing else. I fear there was yet nothing before his eyes but claws and teeth and eyes in the dark.” Dumbledore pointed up at the ceiling. “Do you see that scorch mark on the marble? Filch hasn’t been able to get it out, nor have the elves. Some things, the castle chooses to remember.”

“But that wasn’t what happened,” James said stubbornly.

“Oh, my dear boy,” Dumbledore said, smiling at him without any doubt in it. “Had I believed it was, I assure you, the matter would have been handled rather differently. But in that moment, what did it matter what _I_ thought?”

“But you did make him!” protested James. “You said he promised not to tell about Remus.”

“So he did, my boy, but I didn’t make him. I asked him.” Dumbledore meditatively crooked a finger and rubbed at his ear. “There was, as I intimated, a good deal of _shouting_ first, I won’t deny that, but, do you know, it was all directed at you and young Sirius? The professors didn’t start complaining about him glaring at our good friend Remus during lessons until after Minerva had told me how glad she was that the four of you seemed to be friends again. And even between you and Sirius, the lion’s share—if you will forgive the term—of his animus was yours.”

“Mine?” James spluttered. “I saved his life.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore mused, gazing out the window. “He was sure you’d see it that way. In fact, he was, as I say, rather more upset about that than about his life being endangered in the first place, which I must say I found rather disturbing.”

“He’s always been a very weird piece of work, sir. But I can’t say I’m surprised he didn’t want to acknowledge a life debt to me.”

“Oh, no, that wasn’t it,” Dumbledore corrected him. “You see, he half-suspected you’d arranged for the encounter precisely so he would be in your debt.”

James’s jaw dropped. He tried to think of something to say to that, and all he could come up with was, “ _Slytherins!”_

“Well, yes,” the old man acceded, nodding philosophically. “Later, when he was able to be more measured on the subject, he explained to me that he cannot, in his view, be indebted to you because the saving of his life was an unasked byproduct of your rescue of the futures of your good friends Sirius and Remus.” He popped another sweet into his mouth and sucked on it for a moment. “I’m almost certain that was what he meant,” he added cheerfully. “Deciphering the remark required a pensieve and diagrams.”

James frowned. “Is he right?” he asked. He didn’t exactly _want_ to be connected to Snivellus, in any way, but it was reassuring to think he had a piece of invisible armor against the sneakiest sneak he was enemies with.

“I confess, I’ve no idea,” Dumbledore said, not sounding very sorry about it. Or interested. “Magics such as life debts are ancient and primitive—or, let us say, primal. If they aren’t entirely psychothamatic.”

“What?”

“A magical effect we unknowingly impose upon ourselves because we believe it to be already in effect, or for other reasons we aren’t aware of.”

“Like what?” James asked dubiously.

Dumbledore gave the sort of head-shake that meant the answer would have taken too long. “I don’t know of anyone who’s been able to make any conclusive study of life debts, and they certainly aren’t my area of expertise.”

“Maybe I’d better do some research,” James said slowly, still frowning.

“Then I wish you the best of luck. As I was saying, however, very little of his animus was for young Mr. Lupin. Once he’d stopped shouting at me for inadequate safety measures, I had, in fact, very little difficulty in securing his agreement to a geas of silence.”

Skeptical, James asked, “What exactly does ‘very little difficulty’ mean?”

“He appeared to believe,” Dumbledore said regretfully, “that I meant to use as leverage for his agreement the fact that he had been outside the Hogwarts grounds on a school night. I’m sure I suggested no such thing, but he found the notion most offensive.”

James paused. “He was pissed off because he assumed you were going to blackmail him?” he summarized tentatively.

“I’m still not entirely certain,” Dumbledore said cheerfully, “whether he considered his intelligence had been insulted because he thought I would threaten him with something so insignificant as a detention over a commitment he rightly understood to be of great weight, or felt his honor had been outraged because he never had any intention of endangering Mr. Lupin in the first place, or both. I do rather suspect it to be both.”

“But you didn’t threaten him,” James said slowly, his eyebrows crawling up, “he just assumed you were going to.”

“You have it exactly,” Dumbledore beamed, and offered him the sweets bowl.

“But would he?” he asked helplessly. He didn’t take a sweet, because Dumbledore was acting like it was a reward for understanding and he didn’t. At all. If it was even possible to understand Snape.

“Because, my boy,” Dumbledore said gently, leaving the bowl at the edge of his desk where James could reach it easily, “he was angry and frightened and upset. When faced with those from whom other children would expect protection when frightened, he could only assume he would be threatened and forced.”

His eyes drifted meaningfully to the scorch mark in the ceiling.

“I get it, I get it,” James said irritably, “he was scared and he still yelled at you, you want me to say it was brave.”

“No, James,” the old wizard said, smiling a little sadly. “He was frightened and _angry_ and he still agreed to be sealed to a silence that would protect someone for whom he had no love. What I hope for you is nothing less.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : No, there are no typos in the last paragraph.
> 
> Am curious: What do you think Dumbledore's moment of pity was about?
> 
> Also, this fic has as its beta the scintillating psyche_girl, who motivates me to churn out chapters and makes sad eyes when Filius isn't nerdy enough. When the time comes, REMEMBER IT WAS ALL HER FAULT. >:D


	2. Underground, Godric's Hollow, August 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regulus is twenty, and almost two years out of school, and he thinks it's time to grow up. He is, by all appearances, so very, very, very alone in this opinion...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : neuroticism, obsession, and SLYTHERIN!
> 
>  **Reminder** : Characters' opinions are wholly their own, please do not assume the writer shares them, _especially about books, okay, are we clear?_ Excellent, carry on...

"If you've come to steal the family jewels, I don't think she's got any."

Reggie yelped and turned around. He consoled himself with the knowledge that he'd only dropped the book on his foot because he was going for his wand. " _Evan!_ " he said crossly, restoring both book and wand to their proper places. "What are you doing here?" When this just got him more eyebrow, he asked crossly, "Why in Medea's knife-drawer would I be looking for jewels in Professor Bagshot's library?"

"Why would I look to find Reggie Black in Auntie Bathilda's library?" Evan asked rhetorically, draping himself against a bookshelf with absent-mindedly artistic lethargy. "But here you are."

It was more like second cousin four times removed, but Evan had been the kind of quiet but not sullen little boy who was fed a lot of sweets by every witch with a scrap of maternal instinct who bumped into him, on the premise that he'd needed cheering up. It had infuriated and baffled Sirius, who'd tried on several occasions to copy his dispiritedly polite look. The result had been less successful than an excellent satire of your garden-variety Psuedo-Suicidal Faux-Byronic Poet. Sirius had generally been told to stop cadging for biscuits and play with the other children, and Reg for several years had been very confused about how many sisters Uncle Darius and Aunt Drusilla had (none).

Fortunately for Evan and for Reggie's mental health, Evan had had the sense to share his loot.

…Except for that time old Charis Crouch gave him toffee with chocolate _and_ nuts (and rather horrifyingly demanded that he call her Nanny Carrie). But that was probably at least partly Bella's fault for taking the crayons hostage.

"I'm looking for a _book,_ " Reg said, scowling at him. "I owled about it, and she said it was nice to see Binns hadn't killed off all interest in her subject since he died and I could come look for it if she wasn't in."

"Trusting old bird, I'll have to tell Cissa to suggest Aunt Dru have a word with her," Evan said thoughtfully. "Nothing personal, Reggie, only not all her relations are as universally beloved as my own good self—"

Reg rolled his eyes. Not too hard, though, since Ev was kidding.

"—And not everyone's forgotten that. What are you looking for? She's got a bit of a _personalized_ system, you won't find it by author."

He hesitated. But actually, what he was looking for was perfectly unexceptionable, really. So probably he shouldn't have hesitated. It was too late to pretend he hadn't, so he looked embarrassed instead. "I wanted to see what she had on Salazar," he admitted.

Evan looked politely puzzled, though he didn't insult Reg by cloaking it in one of his sleepy looks. "That's not like you, is it?"

Reg drew back his head a little, insulted. "I read!" he huffed. "Just because I'm not _Spike_ doesn't mean I don't read. People who aren't Spike read the occasional book and still go out some evenings sometimes, you know."

"And at night," Evan said blandly, and Reg couldn't stop himself flinching. Evvie didn't press it, though, not even to ask how Bast was doing. He just continued as though he'd always meant to. "Yes, I remember. Vastly overrated, if you ask me."

"No one did ask you," Reg grumbled. "No one _had_ to ask you."

"No, I suppose they didn't," he said smugly, with a restrained little spine-wriggle that in Reg's opinion should have had him arrested for public indecency, except that they weren't in public. "But I didn't mean you're _illiterate,_ kitten—"

Regulus sighed. It was also probably (definitely) (far) too late (by years) to get his hands on a time-turner and arrange to be named after a less embarrassing snake. The hell of it was that the scientific name wasn't any better, because he'd been given it at thirteen and Thor Rowle had decided almost immediately that slipping an N in there made 'boiga' very 'funny.'

"I meant, well, the stuff Auntie B keeps down here is like that glass-fronted shelf Spike keeps in his stillroom next to the ingredients pantry."

His face fell. "That bad?"

"That bad and _really dusty,_ " Evan said ruefully. "Less arithmancy, alchemy, algebra, and researcher-grammar, but old-people grammar's just as bad in large portions. There's enough howsoevers and hithertos and begats and extra Es floating around down here to make a modern publisher start throwing reducto curses around. Not being Spike is probably an important factor, honestly, unless you're here for serious research. It's not a place to look for a _good_ read. Some of it's not even _Middle_ English, Reg."

"…So when Dad said she had primary sources, he really meant she had _primary sources,_ " Reg drooped.

"…Er, what else would he have meant?"

"Well, I sort of thought he meant primary as in, you know, the best ones. He was a little… I asked him after his after-dinner digestif and I thought he might have meant _the_ primary sources and… missed." He avoided Evan's eyes, and not just because it hadn't actually been after dinner. Ev probably didn't look pitying, or even have that awful kind look, and of course he was family and already knew, but… still.

"Ah." Yes, Evan understood him, all right. But you could rely on Evan not to be sorry for you. Or even care much, unless Spike made him think he should. "No, he probably meant what he said. She keeps all the originals at Gringotts, of course. Everything here's a geminus-copy," Ev shrugged. "But, well. Why the sudden burning interest?"

Reg scowled at him again, and this time it was with genuine resentment. "Don't you _ever_ feel like everything's going wrong and there's nothing you can do?"

Evan stared back at him. Blankly.

"Not _once?_ "

"Regulus," Evan said, slowly and carefully, "I live with _Spike_."

Reg returned the stare, confused now.

Evan sighed at him. "The only days where there's a less than 95% chance that Severus will not have actively involved himself in a dramatic catastrophe which, he has perfectly logical reasons for concluding with clarity and certainty, will inevitably lead to us all straight to the intersection of Ragnarok and the apocalypse are the ones where he never leaves the flat or speaks to anyone but me at all. And if I tried to keep him home more than one day in a row, he'd chew his way out straight through the wall. And even when he does stay home he's usually giving himself an ulcer about all the pre-existing catastrophes."

"So… he's the one I should ask what to do about feeling like that."

"Don't bother," Evan said dryly. "Going to find the best book about Salazar or Machiavelli or whoever is exactly what he'd do, too. Besides, I don't know what you mean. Just the _thought_ of his stomach lining makes me feel _exactly_ like that. _And_ his nerves, they must be in rags already and we've only been out of school two years!"

"That sounds exhausting," Reg said experimentally, in case Evan was trying to warn him off, tell him living with Spike wouldn't be a walk in the park. It wasn't _Reg's_ fault Spike had outsized magnetism for a homely bloke and Evan kept snogging him in front of Reg. It wasn't as if Reg was going to _do_ anything about it.

"You'd think so," Evan agreed with a sort of proud, baffled, long-suffering pleasure, "but he doesn't seem to run out of energy. He doesn't even sleep enough, if you ask me."

"Er… that wasn't quite what I meant."

Evan looked at him like he was speaking Mermish.

"Evvie, has anyone ever told you that sometimes you look _exactly_ like Bella?"

The you-are-speaking-Mermish look continued. "I can't say anyone has, Reggie, no, what with her being a slate-eyed brunette who moves like she's got a book on her head when she's not diving at you with her nails out."

"I just mean, er, Spike's not actually the only person actually alive in the whole world, right?"

" _Quite_ right, Reg," Evan said in the kind of gentle, condescending voice that was begging for a hex. "I can prove it to you, if you weren't sure. I've painted some of them, they mostly haven't started moving yet."

Reg scowled. "I mean, things can go wrong about other people, there can be problems that are bigger than just about Spike."

"Yes, I know," Evan said, not changing tones. "I hear about them all the time. They're the ones he's worried about."

"…I'm getting you an apron for your next birthday."

"Make sure it's one of those completely white lacy ones that'd dissolve at the first grease spot, then; Spike won't let me in the kitchen."

Although that wasn't exactly news, Reg still had to ask, "Exactly what use are you?" Mostly because Evan in a gingham apron was funny but Evan in a French maid's outfit made his head hurt and he didn't want to think about it. He really, really hoped Spike had better taste than that. It wouldn't work at _all._

"I'm very pretty," Evan replied serenely, without skipping a beat.

"You're very _Anglo-Saxon,_ " Reg corrected, because Evan showed more of the family's Macmillian strain than anyone else, and it went with the Rosier hair so naturally that Reg was really surprised that Evvie had never painted himself as a Viking. Or he would have been, except that holding up something like an oar or a sword would probably have been too much work. He was a bit too broad to be called pretty, really, including in his long face, and Reg would have thought that a painter who had voluntarily stepped down as their team's Seeker for exactly that reason would know that.

Evvie raised an eyebrow at him. "Has anyone ever told _you_ that you get as snippy as Siri when you're in a mood? We'll blame it on dust in the brain. Come on up and we'll see what kind of tea she's got in until she gets back and you can pick her brain instead of sneezing through her books. Have you seen the garden? The plangentines won't be blooming in August, of course, but she's got heather, moly, and sunflowers right up next to each other, it's hysterical."

"…Why is it hysterical?"

Evan's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and then he said, "You'll see when you look at it."

"What are _you_ doing here, anyway?" Reg asked, following him upstairs a little reluctantly.

Evan shrugged as they came into the old lady's entryway. "I didn't have a sitting today, and I needed to get out of the flat, and I haven't visited in a while."

Reg eyed him warily. "You needed to get out of the flat?" That was like Gildy saying he needed to get away from the mirror. It was summer _,_ really quite warm out, and not a weekday. Unless things had drastically changed since school, it was something close to a miracle that Evan was _awake._

Disappointingly, Evan looked proud. "Spike hasn't sent polite nice-to-have-met-you cards yet to all the brewers he's just decided he despises in person as well as for their research," he explained. "I thought it would go faster if I wasn't around to be glared at for getting him the cards and promising Mum and Narcissa I'd let them know when he'd finished."

"Well, what were _you_ doing in her library then?" Reg asked suspiciously.

Evan eyed him, a little perplexed. "Er… I thought she might have been down there and not have heard the door?"

Which made sense and everything, except that Reg hadn't heard the door, or the doorbell, or anyone calling her name. "And being-Spike being a factor in who'd enjoy the books down there has nothing to do with it, I suppose," he hazarded skeptically.

"We are getting to the end of the Greek-Slytherin saga," Evan conceded. "Do you want to borrow it when we're done? It's very good, and I know a good cleaning charm for books."

Regulus made a horrified noise that was definitely not a squeak. Evan just kept looking at him, innocently offering. Sometimes Reg couldn't believe his mother thought Sirius was the awful, inappropriate one.

"Do you want that tea or not?"

Reg definitely-didn't-whimper, and then he got ahold of himself and insisted, " _I'm making it._ "

"I'm not that bad," Evan complained, trailing languidly after Reg's determined stomp to the kitchen. It was very old-lady's-kitchen-ish. "Spike's just mental about tea. Left cabinet above the sink, blue tin."

"Is there something Spike's not mental about?" he grumbled, taking the tea down and looking for the pot.

"More about some things than others," Evan said in that light, careless voice that was guaranteed to make the spine of anyone with a scrap of sense freeze solid. "F'rinstance, I wouldn't like to see him if he was trying to protect someone, and someone got in his way on purpose. Even if it was the same someone."

"I don't know what you mean," Reg said. And could have cursed himself. Wrong, wrong, _wrong,_ you _never_ said that, that was as good as _I admit it._

"Oh, that's a coincidence," Evan said cheerfully. "I don't, either. Reggie, the teapot's _sitting on the stove._ "

"Why talk if you don't know what you mean," Reg muttered sullenly. He wanted to bang things around, but he _wasn't_ Sirius, or twelve, and it wasn't his teapot.

Of course, it wasn't Evan's kitchen table, either, but that wasn't stopping him from putting his boots up on it. "Oh, you were asking about feeling as if everything's going wrong, down there," Evan said, waving an airy hand. "What I mean is, I don't mean anything _specific_ , but he'd come find a book because he'd want an instruction manual. You remember the way he wouldn't let anyone look after him at school."

"What does that have to do with wanting an instruction manual?" Reg asked, feeling a bit like a top someone was spinning. Spinning badly.

Evan regarded Reg levelly over his boot-toes. "Being protected from things that are going wrong takes it _out of his hands,_ Reg. That makes him helpless. You know Severus. Do you think that's something he appreciates?"

Reg bit back the instinctive defensive scowl (not a pout), and made himself look back just as levelly. "What if it was a case where he'd really be safer if he wasn't involved, would you care what he appreciates?"

The boots came down and Evan sat up, regarding Reg with a new interest. "It's a nice point," he remarked slowly. He really was looking at Reg as if Reg was an easel he was thinking of buying. It was thoroughly squirm-making. "I don't know that I ever met it before. Of course, then we have to ask ourselves, is it up to me to decide, and if so, do I decide based on whether I care or based on what he wants?"

"Exactly," Reg sighed, relieved.

"Really," Evan added, giving Reg a warm smile, "no one's ever asked me that before. I'd be tickled just frightfully pink if you'd asked because you cared about my opinion."

"What?" he stuttered, panicked. "No, I—"

"It's fine, rabbit," Evan assured him, amused. "We fish for the answer we want, I understand. But actually, your answer is, no, I wouldn't tie Spike's hands even to try and keep him out of trouble. He'd just dislocate his thumbs to get free and get into it anyway, if he'd meant to in the first place. Maybe too late, with a weak wand-hand. And that would be my fault, and he'd know it."

"So he's the only one who gets to protect other people?" Reg scowled.

"We've already established he's mental," Evan shrugged easily, leaning back in his chair again and lacing his fingers behind his head. His feet stayed on the ground again, though, thankfully; Reg had felt terrible about letting him do that in Professor Bagshot's kitchen even if there wasn't really very much anyone could do about Evvie. "Comes of having a Gryffie mum, I expect. Anyway, that's what _he_ does when things are going pear-shaped."

"Oh," Reg said, making it sound as though he was realizing Evan had just been getting tangled up trying to answer his question. Almost as much to continue that pretense as because he wanted to know, he asked, "What do you do, then?"

Evan slid him a neutral face that said _This_ so clearly he might as well have rolled his eyes. Then he shrugged and smiled, and said, "Oh, I make sure he gets some sleep."

"No, I mean when _you_ feel like that."

"I make sure," Evan repeated slowly, "he gets some sleep."

"Yeah, but going back," Reg reminded him, "to that bit where other people exist?"

This time he got a cool, judging look—not as if Evan disliked him, or even thought he was being stupid (well, not very _very_ stupid, probably?) but as if there were six or seven possible answers in the balance. "My work," Evan said finally, slowly again, but this time as if he was choosing his words carefully, not as if Reg was an idiot, "is to make sure they go on existing along with the living after they die. I don't think Severus quite believes that, at heart. And, you know, coz, I think of myself as a Black just as often as I do a Rosier, so don't take this amiss, but I don't think any of you Blacks understand it."

"What do you mean, he doesn't believe it?" was all he dared to ask.

Evan shrugged. "He doesn't think the people in portraits are themselves, not really. He doesn't say it, but I know he doesn't think they're much more than complicated photographs. He thinks it's a bit morbid, actually, except when he has nightmares about wizards are right about portraits except about it being a good thing to do for people and actually we're jailing and possibly torturing all the ancestors. But mostly he thinks they're just echoes of who they were, paint charmed to mimic what they'd say and do."

Drolly, he added, "Although why he thinks that would be simpler than just giving the psyche a new home to be drawn to when the anima breaks away from the body, I can't _imagine._ I mean, if it were easy to enchant things to do more than one thing, we could all make our own brooms and more people would charm their own clothes, don't you think?"

Reg looked at him helplessly. He understood portraits weren't anything as unimportant as photographs, but he didn't understand what Evan was getting at behind the chatter.

"You and Narcissa and Sirius and Bella and Andi and Spike, you all think the same things are important," Evan said, and held up a hand when Reg would have protested. "Oh, I know, you disagree a lot, but you're all playing the same game."

"What exactly do you think is a game?" Reg demanded, his skin going hot and prickly and tight. The thin, red silk scarf he hadn't had to look at since Severus had 'needed an occlumency partner' wasn't a toy. What had happened to Rabastan wasn't some forfeit.

Fortunately for Evan, he appeared to give this question some real thought. Finally, he said, "'Abstract ideas matter.'"

"…Like what?" Reg asked dubiously.

"Like blood and purity and power."

"You don't think they matter?" Reg asked, even more dubiously.

"I've got this life to have a body in and I get to spend it with Severus," Evan said simply. "I don't know what it'll feel like to be paint."

"Don't you think that's a little selfish?" Reggie snapped. The tea was whistling behind him and he really didn't care.

Evan smiled easily, and floated the kettle off the flame. "Nope. Spike does what he wants and I make sure he gets some sleep."

"…Oh," Reg realized, sagging with stupid. "And what he wants is…"

"To be mental, right," Evvie agreed, all placid. "Well, he doesn't _want_ to, but he wouldn't be Spike if he could help himself. Come on, it's nice out and you haven't seen the tragedy of the sunflowers yet."

Reg followed him and the floating tea-tray out into the garden, which didn't look so awful to him. Professor Bagshot had a little table set up under her plangentine tree, but Evan pulled his chair a little ways away from it to bask in the sunshine. Reg would have scorched if he'd tried that for more than a few minutes without a potion.

"It matters who's in power," Regulus said after a while. "Because everyone who goes for power thinks those things matter, too, and wants to do something about something."

"I know," Evan agreed, a little sadly, without opening his eyes.

"But if you know it matters, why don't you care about making sure? That someone good is, I mean."

"You know I've picked a side, Reg."

"Yeah, but just because it's us and your dad. You don't _care,_ you just said you didn't _._ "

Evan pried an eye open to look at him. "Reggie, how many politicians and government officials and power brokers have you met since your mum decided you were old enough to come to parties?"

"Er… a lot?"

"And you're sure you know, do you, when they're saying something they believe and when they're saying something they're determined to stick to no matter what it costs them and when they're saying something they think you want to believe that they believe and will stick to? How many of them are you sure about that, how often?"

"I'm sure I know one who means what he says," Reg said dutifully.

"Of course," Evan murmured, his eye fluttering shut again in the lowest-energy ironic bow Reg had ever seen. Severus was right; Evan's level of laziness was actually, in a bizarre kind of way, sort of impressive. "But even when they mean well, getting anything changed in that anthill without resorting to outright tyranny costs more than any career has to give. Everyone's terrified that any change could lead to a mistake that would cost us our traditions, or even Secrecy."

He turned and looked at Reggie, a little wryly. "Don't let me stop you being optimistic, rabbit. It is important to have someone in charge who isn't going to break everything. Other than that, though, I can't think the name on the door matters much. They'll be pulling against the same old rusty hinges."

"…Actually, I don't think you should let Spike talk politics to you anymore," Reg decided.

"Actually, I talk to a lot more Ministry people than he does," Evan pointed out. "Often for quite long periods of time, while they whinge about how impossible it is to get anything done."

"Oh."

"Sometimes while in really uncomfortable positions," Evvie added. With, in Reg's opinion, far too much enjoyment.

"Oh, yeah," he remembered, making a face. "Some of those are _really_ undignified. I couldn't believe Mother really wanted me to go along with all that, the first time."

Evan eyed him oddly. "Been a while?"

"The last time was," he swallowed, "when they made me the heir."

"When you were fifteen."

There was something flat about Evan's voice, but Reg seized with relief on a way to get where he wanted to go. "Right. With the family crest behind me and the ring and everything, I felt ridiculous." Actually, he'd felt like Atlas, but you didn't say that. As if it had just occurred to him, he asked, "You must know all the crests and things, don't you?"

"Grandpère might know all of them," Evan demurred. "I couldn't draw them all from memory or anything."

"You could do Salazar's, though, couldn't you? I don't mean the House one, not the full coat of arms, I know that one, I mean what he would have put on his things. On his journals and like that. If she's got anything of his I really would like to read it, even if it is dusty. It'd make a change from Gilderoy's masterpiece, at least," he added, making a face.

"I thought you were enjoying that," Evan noted, amused.

"I am, but it's a bit much in large doses. I can't decide whether the version in first person or the one where it says GILDEROY LOCKHART every three sentences is worse."

Evan laughed. "Well, if you mean his monogram, that's easy enough." He pulled a quill-case, inkpot, and sketchbook out of a mokeskin pouch at his belt. "Here," he said, taking out a broad-tipped quill. In a moment, he'd laid out a serpentine S made wholly of diamond-shaped strokes, like the backs of some rattlesnakes only green.

"That's it?" Reg asked, his heart sinking. That was exactly the pattern of green stones Kreacher had drawn on his picture of the locket. "It's so simple."

"Complicated isn't always clever," Evan said. "You don't want a signature that's going to take you forever, do you? Bogs up the paperwork."

"Suppose not," he admitted. "Evan?"

"Mm?"

"Has _he_ ever asked you for a portrait? Or your dad?"

"Not me. I don't know about Dad, but I don't think so."

"Do you think you could find out?"

Evan hesitated. "Maybe," he said slowly. "Why?"

…Good question. Evan would definitely need an answer to it prepared, too, and all Reg had was Divi-trained intuition sending chills up his spine. Mud. Er. "He and Spike really seem to _get_ each other sometimes," Reg said earnestly. "What if he thinks the same way? We need to make sure he's taken care of."

"Good thought," Evan declared, smiling. "All right, maybe. Reg?"

"Yeah?"

Evan was quiet for a moment. "You know I know first-hand that there isn't anybody who's more brilliant or a better person than our Spike—"

Reg sighed at him. "Evvie, this is what we who live in reality call a 'personal opinion,' and the word you wanted there was 'think.'"

"No, I just know better than you due to better exposure," Evan said smugly. "Anyway, you know that I know that, so you'll know how seriously to take me when I say this."

"'Not at all.' Right."

"No: very, very."

Reg was skeptical.

"He's a _horrible, horrible role model, do not emulate him in any way,_ " Evan said, firmly and fervently. "I mean this. It will only lead to tears and he wouldn't want you to."

Reggie blinked.

"I _mean it,_ " Evan insisted. "Reggie, don't you understand? The only reason he played Quidditch in school was so your brother and Pettigrew would aim at him instead of us. _Severus is a crazy person. This is what he does. He is a moron._ "

"Why are you telling me this?" Reggie asked uneasily.

"I don't know if you remember _,_ " Evan said, blandly enough to make Reggie flinch. "But I was your prefect and your captain, both of you."

"Of course I remember," he said defensively.

"Oh, good. Then maybe it won't surprise you too much if I let you know that I don't have to know what's going on to remember what it looks like when someone's thinking like a Chaser, and when someone's thinking like a Seeker. Especially you, as I've seen you play both. I also know what it looks like when someone's thinking like a rotting bludger-sponge."

Reg sort of wished that if Evan was going to swear (insofar as Evan did swear, which admittedly wasn't very far) he wouldn't do it in a bland-as-porridge voice. It was unnerving. On the other hand, coming from Evan, doing it normally might be just as bad.

He had, at least, taken on a bit of a severe, scolding tone, now, although you had to know him really well to hear that he wasn't just a shoes-untied degree of peeved. "And if I'd had any interest in putting up with that nonsense I would have let Mulgrew be captain, because let me tell you, Reg, he _really_ wanted it, and I didn't especially need all those extra politics at the same time as my NEWT classes."

"I honestly don't know what you're getting at," Regulus told him, just in case it would get Evan to tell him something he didn't know.

Evan sighed. "I just think you should know that if he could make sure, by bleeding every day, that you could stay home every night eating cake with a family who was always nice to you, he'd do it."

Reg's shoulders hunched. "I'm not a child," he said miserably.

Evan shrugged. "If you want respect," he said sympathetically, "go live up to everything your brother wants where he can see you at it. Spike doesn't care about any of that. He doesn't _expect_ anything from anyone, mostly, and when he does it isn't usually very good. You're about the only person he's ever met that he's not afraid of, as far as I can tell."

Evan paused, eyes flicking and lips pursing into a thinking face. They looked at each other, and, in silence, agreed that Gilderoy didn't count.

Evan went on, "That's special to him. He wants you to be all right."

"Spike's not scared of anything," he said hotly, and immediately wished he either hadn't said that or hadn't just insisted he wasn't a child. Either would probably have been okay on their own; both together were _mortifying._

"Okay," Evan said tolerantly, pushing a teacup at him.

"Well, he's not scared of you," he pointed out, trying not to flush and not to sound sullen at the same time.

"Reggie," Evan explained, still sounding horribly tolerant, "I could get hurt or stop liking him." He paused. "Well, I think we've about got that last one sorted, and he mostly trusts me to stay out of trouble, but I could still get splinched or catch dragonpox or Finally Realize What He's Really Like. Pretty sure he's more afraid of me than anyone."

"That's not being afraid _of_ someone," Reg scoffed.

"Well, you've been in his head, I suppose you'd know," Evan allowed mildly, and turned his face up into the sun again. After a moment, without opening his eyes, he added, "You can stop looking at me like I'm going to kill you in your sleep, Reggie; I don't envy you the experience."

"It wasn't nice at all," Reg assured him hastily, and then realized that was probably the wrong thing to say. "I mean—"

"You mean being him isn't something you'd wish on anyone," Evan translated peaceably. "That's what I've been saying for the last five minutes. He wouldn't either."

"Would you?" This time he did want to know.

A very cold smile flickered around the edges of Evan's mouth. Reg would have thought a smile like that would look wrong on him, but it didn't. "I can think of one or two people who could do with a dram or two of what he was born overdosing on." He looked at Reg, his smile warming, softening, and Reg thought he was telling the truth. "You've already got too much, Reggie. That's why he's not afraid of you."

"Evvie?" Reg asked plaintively.

"Mm?"

"When did you get nasty?"

Evan looked at him for a while. "I wish you'd married Selwyn," he said regretfully—out of nowhere, as far as Reg could tell.

"She didn't have all that much patience with me, actually," Reg informed him warily. "Becca was always more my friend than she was. I was never all that comfortable with Marielle, tell you the truth."

"I know," Evan agreed, "and I liked Goldstein, too, but she wasn't much use to you. Even if you and Selwyn had never got to love each other, you were good partners and shieldmates, as prefects. I wish you still had someone who wouldn't hesitate to split skulls if someone looked at you sideways."

"She only did that because it undermined her authority and it would have been worse if you or Spike or Narcissa had had to step in," Reg pointed out.

"It undermined her authority because you were a unit," Evan said, "and what was done to you was done to her."

Reg nodded an I-suppose sort of nod. "I don't see why I have to marry someone from my form, though," he said. "Cissa didn't."

"Of course you don't," Evan blinked, surprised. "Marry a forty-year-old hekau if you like. Only, I thought Selwyn was good for you. No nerves, no games, no nonsense. Nothing to fret about. You wouldn't have had to spoil it trying to be more than friends and partners, you know."

"That's all well and good for you to say," Reg grumbled, giving him slit-eyes.

"It's not _my_ fault I got run over by the Hogwarts Express on a practically daily basis for seven years," Evan protested, turning his little smile skywards. "Anyone'd be jelly after enough of that. It's not as if they let you change rooms, you know."

"Would you have?" he asked curiously.

Evan chuckled, his eyes crinkling and his nose wrinkling a little. Reg wondered if it ever felt unfair to Spike that Evan's nose was a bit small for his face. "That first year? In a heartbeat."

"Well, lucky you," he said sourly. It wasn't that his roommates had been all bad by any means, but 'no nerves, no games, no nonsense' was in no way what his form had been like.

"Oh, Merlin, don't say that in front of Severus." Evan scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. "He'll agree with you at the top of his lungs for the rest of the afternoon."

Reg blinked. "…Why at the top of his lungs?"

"He's got opinions about how much luck kids ought to need. He's been on it a bit, lately. Two guesses why."

"…I actually don't have the faintest idea, Evan."

"Really?" Evan blinked at him. "Reggie, that grant ruling could come down any day now. He did his best at the conference and so did I, we've tried to get as many people lobbying the committee as we can, and he was so nice to some of the most anti-werewolf voices on it I had to make him cocoa to get the taste out of his mouth, but at this point there's nothing more he can do without making a bad impression. Please do not mention the word 'luck' in front of him. Or 'chance.' Or 'odds.' Or—"

"I get it," Reg interrupted, smiling a little almost despite himself. Then his shoulders curled. "Um… Evvie?"

"Mm?"

"Um… look, I know Narcissa's been on his side with this, but…"

Evan sat up and looked at him full-faced.

He squirmed. "It's just… she was writing a letter to the committee while I was over, and I happened to look at Lucius, and he had this sort of… expression."

"What kind of an expression."

"Like… 'I'm sorry you're wasting your time and I wish I could tell you.'"

"Did he see you seeing it?"

Reg nodded. "He looked at me like…" He tried to mimic the way Lucius had eyebrow-shrugged at him: a sort of _we are men of the world who know these things together, it's too bad but c'est la vie_ sort of look.

Evan just sat there and breathed for a few moments, but his lips had gone white. In a numb sort of voice, he asked, "Ministry politics, d'you think?"

"Um." He shrugged apologetically. "I don't know for sure but… those aren't the people I've heard talking about wanting to be more organized and better prepared?"

"Better prepared," Evan repeated. "As in, better _supplied._ "

"I don't really know anything," Reg emphasized.

"Right," said Evan meaninglessly, and stood up.

"They wouldn't leave him hanging without a job," Reg said hastily. "I know they wouldn't. It'd probably pay better." It was possible that no one had thought of that, but Reg was sure Lucius wouldn't mind if Reg reminded him that that sort of thing was important to Spike. He could certainly afford it. There was always that quality-comparison magazine thing Abraxas Malfoy put out for shoppers in Diagon and the other wizarding commercial streets, if Spike needed a cover sort of job he could explain to people. Spike had even worked on it before, in a junior position.

"Yes, of course," said Evan vaguely, and started back towards the house.

"Evvie?"

"Mm?"

He swallowed, and asked in a small voice, "Would… would you paint me?"

Evan turned around, slowly, first his head and then the rest of him. Reggie shrank back: he was being glared at. He was about to say never-mind, it was such a Spike expression, but then Evan, extremely crossly, snapped, " _Thank_ you. Call the desk at Rose  & Yew about a time; I'm not allowed to do my own schedule since I couldn't get a word in edgewise to tell Muriel Prewett she was insisting on Thad Ogden's time. Which was _not_ my fault, I don't think _your mum_ could have shouted over her." He stormed into the house, muttering, "Not since you were fifteen my _eye,_ it's as bad as _Spike_!" Then Reggie heard him say, in a quite different voice, "Auntie! I was afraid I was going to have missed you!"

Reg sat still in the garden for a few shaky minutes, listening to Evan explain and chat to Professor Bagshot, not really trying to hear. He had the sense of _that happened too fast_ that he always got after parties, where people weren't _really_ talking over his head but it was all he could do to keep up and he knew he was missing things.

Of course, it was a bit flattering, if you looked at it the right way. Evan had probably still been pulling more punches than he would have with people he was working on at a party, but he was definitely pulling fewer of them than he did in his flat when Spike was there. And Reg had always assumed that was just because they were alone and informal, but after this he was going to have to consider that it might have more to do with the universally-acknowledged wisdom of Do Not Fence With Snape Because He Avoids And Gets Annoyed At Things He Is Bad At And Will Instead Choose To Clobber You Over The Head With A Mace Made Of Your Failings.

Not that being considered better than Severus at dancing around was _very_ flattering, all things considered. Still, if Evan was willing to spar with Reg in a friendly way even now that they were out of school, that was actually really nice of him. Especially given that the Dark Lord was giving Reg an opportunity to do things more on Lucius's end than Bella's, which was almost more intimidating.

Feeling better, he picked up the tea tray and went in. Evan was helping the old lady put away her shopping, but he looked up with a smile and made introductions.

"Thanks for letting me come use your library, Professor," Reg said, shaking hands. He wondered if she had any goblin blood. She wasn't as short as Professor Flitwick, but he still had to bend down for it.

"Nonsense, it's a pleasure to see someone your age interested," she said, adding with a sly sort of smile, "even if it's only in their own House's founder."

"I guess that must be the most common." Reg let himself flush a little, even though he could feel Evan being amused with him. Evan was putting away a re-waxing cheese wheel with his back turned, but Reg could still tell.

"I told him he'd be better off talking to you than sneezing through your books, though," Evan told the Professor cheerfully. "I fancy he didn't quite believe me because Binns is so awfully dull and it's far more possible to read the textbook without nodding off, but you do realize, Reggie, it was Auntie Bathilda here who _wrote_ the textbook."

"No, I do know," said Reg, wondering why Evan was so keen to be alone with the Professor's books and smug to be proved right about it, "but I don't want to be a bother…"

"Not at all!" She patted his hand. "I wouldn't mark fourth-year homework again for all the dragonhide in Romania, but I do miss the rest of it sometimes, you know. Any tea left in that pot?"

"Most of it," Reg admitted. "…Why fourth-year homework, particularly?"

She grinned. There was something familiar about it, although how wrinkled her mouth was got in the way of working out what. She was related to the Rosiers, of course, but Reg didn't think that was quite it. "Fourth years are the oldest who aren't swotting for one of the really important exams. That means they're the oldest students who have any free time worth mentioning, and half of them realize it's their last hurrah. Dreadful work, simply dreadful."

Reg grinned back, although less widely, and looked at Evan. "I do remember being deeply aware it was my last year before Slughorn made me start trying to tell people what to do who did not want to be told," he agreed. "Same with you?"

"Nope," Evan replied easily, smiling drowsily from under his eyelashes. "It was not my impression that Slughorn could make me do anything just by giving me a shiny pin."

Reg blinked.

"Except go to the meetings," amended Evan, and stretched. "And maybe do a patrol or two. Glad I got a chance to see you, Auntie B, but I s'pose I'd better let Reggie pick your brain in peace."

"Now, you won't get away without some brain-food for that flatmate of yours," Professor Bagshot scolded. "A young man shouldn't sink all his energies into one subject, it's not healthy. And a good read that isn't an art supply catalogue or coffee table book wouldn't do you any harm, either, young man!"

"We've been reading _The Odyssey,_ " offered Evan. He did meek well enough, but it was an enormous lie.

She gave a massive sniff. Reg didn't even _know_ her and he could hear the disdainful FICTION in it. "Your set could do with being less obsessed with one era."

"That's really just Malfoy," Evan protested. "Severus had something fourteenth-century lined up for next."

She looked slightly appeased. Slightly. "The Canterbury fluff or that florid Italian gossip-rag, I expect. It usually is, when anyone bothers at all. Well, go find something to keep it company. Third shelf under the round window with the sun-catcher. Don't hesitate if anything else catches your eye, and do remind him that if I see so much as one pencil-mark I'll draw his leg-bones out through his eye-sockets."

"Yes, ma'am," Evan laughed, and disappeared downstairs.

"Lovely boy, young Evan's flatmate," Professor Bagshot confided, "do you know him? He's nicely careful with his teacups and so on, I've never seen so much as a crumb, but he _will_ scribble."

"Er, yes, I know him," said Reg, trying to wrap his mind around 'lovely boy.' Despite being strongly in favor of Spike himself on any number of counts, he wasn't sure anyone had enough mind to stretch that far. "Yes, Miss Pince beat him over the head with her umbrella once before she realized it wasn't one of her books. He was really offended she thought he'd write in one that wasn't his." Mostly because that would have been the same as giving his notes away.

Her face disappeared disapprovingly into its wrinkles for a moment, but then she sighed and shook her head. "Now, then, what was it you wanted to know?"

Regulus kept his questions confined to the usual ones any Slytherin feeling a bit lost in the everyday politics of family and Ministry might wonder about. Was she sure no one had written down the things Salazar had said to his students, or that no one had found a journal? Mightn't it just be that no one was publishing them because Slytherin was undergoing an unpopular phase? What had he thought, really, how had he worked, how did she know?

Finally, when he was running out of innocent things to ask, Evan came up. There were four books in his arms, and while the top one was indeed a fourteenth-century history and the one below it was a book about magic in the period, Reg couldn't help noticing that the spines of the bottom two were turned towards Evan's body so no one could see what they were.

The goodbyes were all very charming (apparently 'brain-food' included a dish of baked mackerel as well as books), and Reg was almost sure that he didn't show any impatience, or that if he did it could be put down to having to stop an interesting conversation.

When he was quite sure Evan was quite gone, he breathed a sigh of relief, leaned forward in his chair, poured the old Professor a new cup of tea (with just a drop of Clearwater's Chalice of Credulity dropped from his cufflink as he reached over it for the lemon) and started to ask about caves, and druids, and green potions, and things Slytherin had owned.

It wasn't all that helpful, actually, except that it made him think he and Severus had been on the right track to begin with. So he started asking about her old students.

That was better.

For a given definition of 'better.'

He felt rather badly about obliviating away so many hours of a mind like hers, but it was for her own safety, really, that she think he'd left just after the silly questions. And they were silly questions: he had exactly the books he'd asked after in his own family library, although admittedly they were hard to find, let alone reach, even if you were on the Tapestry.

But an old lady like her wouldn't be too embarrassed to have fallen asleep in the garden on a warm summer's day (she'd weighed nothing at all, he could probably have picked her up with his own hands), under the dappled shade of her own winter-fruiting tree. He left the book she'd had near her sofa open on her lap, and just hoped to Merlin he was right about that being the sort of thing she'd do.

After that, he went to go see if Marielle had any plans for the evening or was up for a visit, with or without Bulstrode. Evvie was right: she was restful. They both were. Reg rather felt he'd like to be done with games for the day, even if it meant listening to stories about the perils of training security trolls all evening, or even about dodging rejected dummies and strained peas and why Reg was clever for not settling down right out of school even if he was more than half sure they were both wrong and kindly lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : So a python, a rat, and a baby bird walk into a waiting room...
> 
>  **Notes** : The quote, whether you've met it before or not, is from _Iolanthe_. Evan has, by now, had more exposure to certain oeuvres than he really wanted. Or I couldn't resist, take your pick. ;D
> 
> The wiki says that Millicent Bulstrode is a half-blood, but this is based on an interview and, as previously stated, I only consider the books canon (and even then with qualifications).
> 
> On the subject of her parents, it's Selwyn who trains security trolls. As was mentioned previously, Bulstrode raises crups and thestrals.
> 
> Bathilda's smile looks familiar to Regulus because he's seen her great-nephew Gellert's manic grin in pictures.
> 
> No, Reg is probably not the only person to interrogate her without her retained-knowledge in this way, and I leave it to you to decide whether there's a relationship to her future battiness...
> 
> The 'florid Italian gossip-rag' is, of course, the _Divine Comedy_. If you don't know what the Canterbury fluff is, yes you do. ;p
> 
>  I have childhood memories of my little brother going, "BOIN-GY, BOIN-GY, BOIN-GY!" A lot. And laughing hysterically. I do not know why now and don't think I did then. I imagine it had to do with TV I did not watch. There may have been muppets of some sort involved. It seems like the sort of thing they'd do. (suspicious eyes)
> 
>  Do not scribble in the books of librarians, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.


	3. Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Ministry of Magic (August 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So a python, a rat, and a baby bird walk into a waiting room...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Notes** : the dates on Barty Crouch Sr. are somewhat confused. The wikia claims in the DMLE sidebar that he was its head from '81 to '90, but the information on his own page has it that he was its head _during the first Riddle War_ and shunted to the Department of International Cooperation afterwards (ie: after he had sent his Death Eater son to Azkaban for life). That gels more with his history as it comes off the pages of GoF, so it's what I'm going with.

"Now, I'm sure you boys have something to be doing."

Pete and Barty both jumped. Pete was annoyed to note that he probably jumped more even though a year's Auror training had left Barty looking exactly as much of a straw-colored rabbit as ever, if a less bony one. At least Pete had more excuse for not having seen Malfoy oil up, though; neither of them had been looking in the right direction but there weren't any windows where Pete was facing.

He should have made _sure_ to face something shiny. It was stupid to fall out of sensible habits that stopped you being surprised from behind by friends who thought the ability to make people jump was the same as having a great sense of humor.

Barty smiled nervously and said, "Oh, hullo, Mr. Malfoy. Just popped up for a cuppa with Father and I ran into—"

"Ah, yes," Malfoy said with what probably passed as sympathy with him, "time for quarterly reviews, I suppose."

Barty's face spasmed. "Er… well…"

"Just as pleased to be done with marks, myself," Pete said cheerfully. "I think Barty can wait if your business with Mr. Crouch is urgent, Mr. Malfoy, can't you, Barty?" Barty shot him a grateful look. Pete was almost entirely sure it was all rubbish and Barty's review was phenomenal by anyone's standards but his father's, but that was Ravenclaws for you.

Or maybe just Crouches. They'd gotten to know Barty when he'd asked Remus if he could study for OWLs with them in fifth year. Their fifth year: Barty's fourth. Apparently the fifth-year Ravenclaws had had a collective hysterical fit at the idea of slowing down their own revising for anything. James and Sirius hadn't been interested, but Remus had told Pete that teaching someone else was the best way to memorize anything, which was presumably why he, Remus, was better than either Padfoot or Sirius at sit-and-stay, fetch, shake hands, and do-not-widdle-on-the-rug.

Pete hadn't minded. He knew what it was like to have to scramble to keep up, and he had not gotten the impression that reading two years' worth of textbooks at once had been anything like the poor kid's idea, birdbrain or not.

Malfoy's grey eyes were sharper on Pete than he liked, and then the older man gave a slick smile. "Not at all," he said smoothly, and gestured at Barty. "By all means."

Barty's eyes darted. "We were just catching up, I'm not in a hurry…" No one was in a hurry at the Ministry on the weekends. Except when everyone was, which was why only the departments that never had emergencies to deal with got to stay home.

Malfoy's pale lashes fluttered in pained tolerance. "You may tell your father," he said in a spelling-things-out-for-idiots voice, "that he has two people waiting to see him, including myself."

"Oh, no, please, you can go—"

"So he'll have to keep it short?" Pete explained helpfully.

"… _Right!"_ Barty gasped, and scuttled up to the waiting room's desk to give himself up to the secretary as if Malfoy's sardonic gaze was actually shoving him. Weatherby let Barty in with an air that was mostly no-nonsense, but did sort of acknowledge that he had a trace of human feeling of which Barty might well be in need. It reminded Pete of the Tartan at exam time. And points-taking time. And homework-collecting time. And, come to that, lunchtime.

Malfoy shook his head in muted exasperation. "Honestly," he sighed, "it's as bad as talking to… well."

"He looks like hasn't been getting much sleep lately," Pete suggested. He didn't actually want to be talking to Malfoy at all, but the man had been decent to Barty, who was one of the few people besides Pete's close friends who hadn't started looking at him like he'd stopped washing since the horror in Spring. "I hear Auror training's really tough."

"No doubt that's what it is," Malfoy said, with what Pete thought was a slightly odd curl to his smile. But then Malfoy had been in Slytherin; even if he'd been several years ahead of even Pete, he probably knew all about Barty's crazy boyfriend.

There were a few moments of silence that felt increasingly awkward to Pete. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he said uncomfortably, "Er… I ran into Regulus Black a while back, he said you and Mrs. Malfoy had a baby. Congratulations."

Malfoy brightened. "Why, yes, we did," he said, and brought out the unavoidable photograph. Photographs. The baby looked as much like a sausage as any other baby to Pete (in more extremely and expensively frilly lace than most, but still, a sausage), but he made the obligatory noises.

Temporary baby-induced monomania assuaged, Malfoy looked at Pete more as if he was actually seeing him and asked, "Pettigrew, isn't it?"

Pete managed not to say _er, yes_ or shuffle his feet or remind Malfoy of all the points Malfoy had taken away from Pete and his friends for clashing with Snape and _his_ friends. "That's right," he said. "With the Improper Use of Magic Office."

Malfoy looked amused in a way that suggested he did not need to be reminded of even one of those points. "So I see," he nodded at the box of files floating next to Pete. It had the IUMO logo stamped on the side. In quite large yellow letters.

"Weekends can be slow," Pete shrugged. "There's time to catch up on the housekeeping." This was sort of true. It was a slow _enough_ day that they could spare _someone_ to catch up on the paperwork, but everyone else was working on more current things.

Malfoy slid him a slow look, his eyes hooded. What he said was, "I wasn't aware that you were friendly with Regulus."

"Oh, I don't know him that well," Pete admitted uncomfortably. "He's all right. He introduced me—" he stopped. Black had had him to that dinner party, but he wasn't sure what Lucy had been telling her friends since they'd been getting more serious.

There was a pause where it looked like Malfoy was putting fifteen and pi together, and then the man started to laugh. "Oh," he said, in a rather friendlier voice. "Don't tell me you're Wilkes's mouse."

Pete blushed. "Er…"

"A word of advice, Pettigrew," Malfoy drawled, amused. "If you mean to continue stepping out with my wife's favorite schoolfellow, I suggest that in future you don't wear tweed to attend any function that she or any of her relatives might attend. It's simply not the way you wish to be strongly remembered, I promise you."

Turning redder, Pete protested, "She didn't give me any _warning!_ They just said it was dinner! _"_

"Well, no, she wouldn't, would she?" Malfoy asked drolly, eyebrow up. "You're expected to rise, Pettigrew." Taking pity, he noted, "I understand there's been a birth in your own circle?"

Pete blinked. "How—oh, right, Lily did say Mrs. Malfoy had lent an elf. That was very nice of her. Yes, two, actually."

Malfoy nodded. "Yesterday, was it?" he asked politely, looking at the door and taking out his watch.

"No, day before," Pete said, also wondering how long poor Barty was going to be in there. "I suppose you got your elf back yesterday so Lily and Alice could stay a bit and rest. Or, well, just Lily; I think Alice went home earlier on Thursday."

"Alice?" Malfoy asked vaguely, sighing and putting his watch away.

"Longbottom," Pete explained.

"Ah. I trust Mrs. Potter had no difficulties?" he asked politely.

"Oh, Lily's okay, she's a trooper," Pete smiled. "She's pretty tired, though. I heard the baby came late at night, practically yesterday morning." Lily had looked more than just tired, actually, but Pete's mum had said it was normal for new mothers to be blue for a while. James had looked like something was bothering him, too, when he wasn't being nutty about the Lily and the baby.

There were plenty of reasons for that, really, though. When Pete had asked, he'd just given him an overly-hearty smile, clapped him on the arm, and said not to worry, but if Pete wanted to help he could volunteer for grocery-acquisition duties. He was proposing to impose, he'd explained, on the grounds that the borrowed elf had gone home and Remus was fretting himself grey and working his furry arse off, while Sirius could be counted on to bring back fish and chips, two bananas, a carton of mashed carrots, and a box of jam slice.

Which: true.

So most likely James was just overwhelmed with Real Baby and Real Crying and Real Nappies that weren't just nappies, as it turned out, but exercises and skin-goop to be rubbed in, and more rubbing without the oil for reasons known to Lily and reputedly her mum but not to God or man, and the baby being expected to spit up every time he ate and just all sorts of things that kept needing to be done over and over, and Lily being more exhausted than excited.

Mum had told Pete that would probably happen. It was the first time she'd been right about one of his friends ('don't react to Sirius when he's teasing and he'll get bored' hadn't worked at all, certainly not as well as 'point out other things he could be doing'), though she was usually right about other things.

"Ah," Malfoy said again, not sounding very interested. Pete couldn't blame him. He wasn't all that enraptured by Malfoy's Draco either; it was nice of Malfoy to pretend to take an interest as much as he had. "Yes, now that you mention it I believe I did hear one of the elves saying something of the sort, but…" he shrugged elaborately.

"I hear you," Pete agreed, making a face. "I'm just going to ask Mum what to bring to the baby shower, show up when my mate tells me to, and do my best to be invisible when it's time to change the nappy."

Malfoy slid him a you-are-an-amusing-bug look. It made him look astonishingly like a negative image of Sirius. "I suspect the lady would consider that an improper use of magic."

"Wizarding household, no muggles involved, I think she'd have trouble making it stick," Pete said firmly.

"I shouldn't count on the protection of legality," Malfoy advised drolly, checking his watch again.

Pete shrugged. "Urgent business?"

"I couldn't say, I'm sure," Malfoy said, with a slight sneer. "Perhaps not, if Mr. Crouch prefers tea with his son to discussing it."

"Oh, I see," Pete said, swallowing a smile. Malfoy turned an oh-do-you look on him. Pete managed to ask, "Hoping you'll support him on something?" instead of _wants money?_

"As I understand it," Malfoy agreed, looking at him contemplatively. Pete sort of wanted to run away. "Of course, I have so many demands on my time these days. My father's health has been delicate of late, and between the demands of my estate and a new family, what is one to do? All these committees, one simply can't do _everything_. Crouch wants to open a new office and he's pushing for _three_ new laws, St. Mungo's and the Department of Mysteries want four grants between them, Father tells me practically every week that, as Minister Bagnold is closer to my age than his, I ought to be able to make her understand that the Magical Maintenance Office needs at least a tenth of the budget of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, but I rather think that would take an act of Merlin, don't you?"

Pete stared at him, and thought, _this is a test._ "Maybe just a couple of days of rain in her office," he said, since the last bit was what he thought he'd been invited to be helpful about.

He didn't actually want to be Malfoy's friend, in any way, at all, but if that had been a gesture, he'd been at the Ministry long enough to know better than to let it pass. Not a gesture from one of the Ministry's major bankrolling families who was talking about well-respected department heads wanting to jam new projects into the budget.

Encouraged in a nervous-making way by Malfoy's the-bug-is-moving-in-the-right-direction hood-eyed waiting look, he went on, "Or really slow lifts or nothing but chips and cheese sarnies in the café for a week. Crouch must be keeping those plans really quiet, we haven't been hearing any plans for a new office or anything."

He felt a bit like a rubbish friend for not asking about the grants that would be competing with the Wolfsbane Project one, but if he asked too many questions in a row, he wouldn't be remembered as a conversation but as a nuisance. The grants would be much easier to find out about than anything Crouch was planning.

At least, he doubted he'd be able to get anyone to tell him, the way people acted around him these days. Someone else would have better luck, though, now Pete would be able to tell them what to ask about. Or, for that matter, _Dumbledore_ probably knew; he had fingers in all the pies, cakes, biscuit tins, and cheese plates.

Malfoy's white-blond head tilted. "And when enquiries showed the budget had not yet exhausted itself?"

Pete shrugged. "Then the MMO calls it what it is: a demonstration of where the current direction is going, in hopes of preventing disaster before we get there."

It tilted in the other direction. "As I recall, Pettigrew, you ran with an interesting crowd at school."

"They're good friends to me," Pete tried to explain, knowing exactly what he meant by 'interesting.'

"No doubt, no doubt." Malfoy agreed smoothly, and pinned him with a knowing look. "But they must have made your life… full of incident."

Pete shuffled a bit, uncomfortable. "Er… maybe a bit."

"Are you a pureblood, Pettigrew?"

He was a bit alarmed. "Er… probably not by your definition, but my family's all magical." His mum was and his dad had been, anyway, which was the important thing. Unless you thought the important thing was pure blood back to the fifth century or whatever, which of course Malfoy would.

You could mostly tell who was that kind of snob by whether or not their trouser cuffs looked like they were lingerie-and-lining material or tough enough fabric to be clothes in their own right and meant to be worn outside a robe, the first names that would make muggles stare, and the hilariously reliable preference for little touches like green or extra-shiny white handkerchiefs, or silver and emerald tie clips or cravat pins. A walking stick with a snake on one end that didn't even have a rubber tip or something on the other end to stop it clicking on the floors was not a little touch.

"So, yeah, not _pureblood_ -pureblood, but—"

"Do you know about muggles?"

Pete looked at his file box. "Well… yeah?" he asked, giving Malfoy a wary look. "You have to. Anyway, you're expected to take Muggle Studies and that in Gryffindor, it's," he waved a hand, "you know."

"Quite," Malfoy said, and Pete gave him a very, very tiny bit of credit for very nearly trying not to sneer very much. "And do you enjoy your job, Pettigrew?"

Pete tried not to look at him like he was crazy. He was probably just making conversation out of boredom. "It's all right," he said, trying not to sound too unenthusiastic. "Gets me out in the fresh air once in a while."

"When you're not doing… housekeeping."

"Got to pitch in and do your part," Pete said gamely.

"What a team player you are," Malfoy said. It was condescending, but in a kind of conspiratorial way, which was weird. "If you're being wasted, Pettigrew, you needn't make excuses for your superiors. Unless," he smirked, still very conspiratorially, "that's what you're good at?"

Pete looked at him, trying very, very hard to keep his face blank with no twitching. He was rather afraid that, despite his best efforts, his nose hadn't quite cooperated.

"Let me see," Malfoy stroked his chin. "as I recall, the afternoon that a curtain of bubotubor pus was suspended in the air just outside the entrance to the Slytherin common room, you and your three friends were safely ensconced in History of Magic, and of course Professor Binns had no recollection of anyone leaving his classroom. Isn't that right?"

"Can't say I recall," Pete said stoutly. Binns had been their best alibi until McGonagall had caught on and told the portrait outside his office to write down the time every time the door opened, whether she saw anyone come out or not. "When would that have been?"

Malfoy gave him the you-are-an-amusing-bug smile again. "Yes, yes, very good."

The door opened, and Barty came out. He wasn't staggering or stumbling or anything like that, but he looked rather as if he wanted to. His face was even more skim-milk-colored than usual.

"Ah," Malfoy said smoothly. "Well. If you'll excuse me."

Pete jiggled his file box pointedly, although really he just needed to drop them off with the secretary. "Oh, sure," he said. "Happy to—provided you'll let me know what that new office is all about. Got to have something to appease the lads with if I'm going to be as late as all that," he added with his best halp-Sirius-is-going-to-destroy-me-only-you-can-save-mankind-Remus face.

The good-bug smile widened. "It would be to deal with muggle… things that have been enchanted," Malfoy said. "I understand there's been a rash of that sort of thing." He gave Peter a gently pitying look and added, "'Slow Saturdays aside."

Pete straightened, alarmed. "But _we_ deal with those." Then he felt stupid as well as alarmed, since that was sort of just what Malfoy had said.

"Yes," Malfoy agreed, a little dreamily. "I suppose it would impact your department." He gave Pete a very worrying conspiratorial little smile and added, "But perhaps you needn't worry about that. Do give Miss Wilkes my regards, and tell her Narcissa is wondering whether she's been devoured by wild muggles."

"Er… right," Pete muttered dubiously to his disappearing back and the closing door.

"Would you drop those off already?" Barty demanded, bracing himself on the doorframe out to the hall. "You're buying me a pint."

"You're buying _me_ one," Pete retorted. "You left me alone with that, that… _him_ for—"

"Do you think I was enjoying myself?" Barty squawked.

"I'm _sure_ you were enjoying yourself," the secretary put in firmly. They turned to him, startled. "I'm absolutely positive you were enjoying yourself having a cup of tea with your father, sir. Correct?"

"Oh. Of course I was," Barty said slowly, being careful. "I just meant, er…"

"Your dad always thinks you want too much sugar, too, does he?" Pete asked sympathetically.

Barty looked grateful, but of course he couldn't just agree. Because he was a bloody Ravenclaw. He said, "Too much lemon." Then he thought about it, and his mouth tightened until his lips were white. " _Far_ too much lemon." His voice was tight, too, and his hands clenched for just a second before he relaxed them and said in a voice that was better, if a bit forced, "He always has a good blend, though."

Pete looked at the secretary to see if that had all passed muster. It wasn't Malfoy's you-are-a-clever-bug look, but it was definitely amused. He said, "I see what Mr. Malfoy means."

"Don't suppose you'd like to share?" Pete asked, completely exasperated.

Weatherby gave a professional little smile and said, "Best not to call game before the snitch's showed, sir. I'll take those, if you'd like to drop them off."

"I'm really glad I've had this kind of a day," Pete told Barty, leaving the files and a peeved look with Crouch's secretary. "Because I'm going to be seeing Sirius later and after today he's going to be a cakewalk even if all he's offered are girly drinks."

Barty gave him a big-eyed look and said, "I think I'd walk through the dragonpox ward, if I were you."

"How was your review?" asked Pete, because he wasn't a _saint_.

"It was _good!"_ It wasn't a shout. In fact, it wasn't loud at all. It just sounded as if it should have been.

"What's his problem, then?"

"He thinks I should be concentrating on languages to make it easier to work with the ICW later."

Pete considered. "Is it worth fighting him on it?"

Barty gave him a flat look. "My father has a reputation for knowing about two hundred languages, and I don't know how many he actually speaks fluently but I'm positive it's at least two dozen. He's a freak like that. He already spoke three languages when he got to Hogwarts. All my teachers tell me there is nothing wrong with translation spells and I'm much better off concentrating on curses and potions and magical creatures and, you know, the other things _we're supposed to be learning._ "

"…And he's your teachers' boss," Pete summed up.

"Right."

"Okay," he allowed. "I'll buy you a pint. But you left me alone with that creepy snake-oil watering can; you're getting the next round."

"You told me to!"

" _He_ told you to, I didn't know he was doing it on purpose!"

"Neither did I! Wait, he was doing it on purpose?"

" _Very, very creepy,_ " Pete emphasized.

"Oh, you Griffies are just anti-snake," Barty waved him off. "They're not all bad."

"I'm going out with a Slytherin, too," Pete protested. Barty stared at him, and Pete thought he seemed a little annoyed for some reason. Mostly surprised, though, which was only natural. Pete looked sheepish. "Er. Don't tell my lot. Well, Remus probably wouldn't care, er, much, I mean, he'd worry but I don't think he'd _care…_ "

"Right," Barty took pity.

Pete nodded, "But, you know." Barty nodded. Everyone knew. "But, yeah, I didn't say they were all bad, I said Malfoy's creepy."

Barty shrugged. "He can't help it, Reggie says. He's just a bit…"

"Creepy?"

Barty rolled his eyes. "No, on his dignity, what's the word…"

Pete considered. He considered the very fine robes and the contained little head motions and flicks of facial muscles and quickly-flexed arm and hand movements. "Camp?"

"What? No—Slughorn."

"That's what I said," Pete complained. His day was vastly improved when Barty, a Slug Club treasure more or less since he'd first set foot on the Hogwarts Express, looked shocked, snorted, and started to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : Horace takes tea with a protégé who wants something from him. Like he does. Must be Tuesday. Nothing to see here.
> 
> RUN, HORACE, RUN!


	4. Dye Urn Alley (August 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Won't you step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly—er, the rose to the spider… no, the cobra to the rattler… GODDAMMIT, SLYTHERINS!
> 
> OR
> 
> Horace has tea with a protégé who wants something from him. Like he does. Must be Tuesday. Nothing to see here. (Run, Horace, run!) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : that you're not getting any. Sorry about that. (See story notes.)
> 
>  **Notes** : I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO DO THIS CHAPTER SINCE 2007, YOU GUYS, OK. It's not quite as I originally wrote it, but what emerges from a cocoon is determined, to some extent, by its context...
> 
> And that's the only hint you're getting. ;)

"Why, you have a very nice place here!" exclaimed Horace approvingly, looking around at all the pale maple and shades of blue-grey. "I must say, it's not quite what I would have expected—very calm and airy. Tell the truth, now, boys, Narcissa picked your furniture, didn't she." He winked to show he was joking.

"No," Severus said resignedly. "Her contribution was to step on my foot every time I started to say 'what about this one.'"

"We let you have veto power, though," Evan reminded him comfortingly. "You used it a lot."

"Well, you suggested a lot of remarkably silly things."

Evan grinned. "Well, you made a lot of remarkably funny faces. Please, Professor, have a seat."

"Very comfortable," Horace approved, patting the chair-arm as he sank down. 'A very nice place' was what you said to the owners, of course. If he'd been describing the flat to anyone else, he might have said 'sparse,' or 'verging on sterile, apart from the books,' and certainly 'sadly lacking in cushions.' The armchair itself was nicely padded, and the rug in front of the fire was comfortably (not to say suggestively) plush, but in the whole room there were only two cushions, one for each end of the sofa, and they were quite, quite plain.

He wasn't surprised that there weren't any portraits on the walls, despite young Rosier's profession: if the student Snape had never quite confirmed for himself how the ones at Hogwarts helped out, he'd at least been wary of them. The paintings that were up here made a chap wonder whether their artist honestly just enjoyed skyscapes or was trying a wee bit too hard to encourage his guests to subconsciously think of him as an airhead.

If he had guests. The place wasn't set up for more than one at a time, unless they had some very fancy spellwork to pull out when entertaining. Oughtn't to put that past them, of course, not a clever lad like Snape, or one like Rosier with the sense to stay on good terms with his family's house elf.

"They wouldn't let me see the prices," Severus complained at him. Horace had a very fine old bottle of brandy riding on a bet with Flitwick that the lad would make it to thirty without letting go one single old resentment.

Which reminded him; he ought to trip along to the Wager Room and see if any of the labels on the prizes he had a stake in had changed to declare a winner recently. It was never too soon to start preparing his little speeches for what Albus called the Faculty Welcome Feast and Sylvanus insisted on calling (more accurately, Horace had to admit, if less gracefully) the Oh Merlin We're About To Be Mobbed Bender.

"We agreed it's my furniture so that had nothing to do with you," Evan reminded him sternly, smiling. "You just get to use it so long as you save me from having to cook."

"On which subject," Severus gave in with moderate grace. He left for the kitchen, grumbling under his breath about exactly what constituted 'agreement.'

Horace wasn't sure whether this (alleged?) agreement of theirs had been a canny piece of social-climbing on Severus's part, or Evan had genuinely had to haul him up kicking and screaming by the collar, or they'd done an extraordinarily deft little waltz together around the Hogwarts-sized chip on Severus's shoulder. He hoped it was the latter, as that would have the best implications for the future of their teamed work, but whichever it was, he was quite proud of them for having resolved such a delicate matter with so little resentment left over that he _couldn't_ tell even while Severus was complaining about it.

"I was delighted to receive your invitation, m'boy," Horace told Evan, "but I must say it was unexpected."

He'd seen the boy several times since he'd graduated, of course—had been one of his first paintings after the perilous self-portrait that was every Guild artist's masterpiece, as a matter of fact. Rosier knew how to play the game; he was quite satisfactory, all things considered, although Horace would have liked to see him be just a touch more sociable with his elders outside of the studio, more interested in current events.

Still, it wasn't as if he were _neglecting_ his connections. Horace could quite understand his declining invitations Snape didn't also get, to keep envy from crawling between them. Not that Snape had ever wanted to attend anything remotely social himself, although his behavior at them had improved remarkably. But it was one thing not to want to go, and quite another to be the one who wasn't invited. Horace hadn't had to waste his time on anything as unsubtle and tedious as personally supervising a detention in decades, with invitations at his disposal to withhold.

Rosier wasn't doing _too_ badly, Horace thought, at balancing his societal obligations with the maintenance of a strong but delicate alliance, all things considered. It was a bit eggs-in-one-basket of him to sink so very much time and energy into one ally, but between his profession and the wealth and backing of his two Houses, Rosier would always be sought after, and being a bit unavailable was really quite good strategy. Especially for anyone who'd been a bit _too_ available, even for as short a period as Evan Rosier had been.

Besides which, Horace was the last to censure anyone for doing whatever it took to bring out real promise and secure its loyalty, and if Evan had seized onto Severus's when Horace had been reluctant to touch it, he could only be proud. And there was promise there, if it could only be polished, and who better than the Blacks to carve out and polish out a jagged piece of mutton jade until its ugly spots were cunning shadows giving shape and depth to something complex and shining? Let the artist give all his eyes to his subject, why not, if the subject would be molded? There was plenty of time for them both to grow up.

And he did, really have, quite a good foundation; his aunt Druella's hand was nearly as clear in him as it was in her own daughters. Even in the two years since the boys had graduated, Horace had seen Rosier several times, been sent treats (once or twice very strange, but tasty when he'd got over squinting at them, and therefore needing no labels to mark them as Severus experiments). He'd even been invited to the occasional drink or meal in Hogsmeade or Diagon, the unveiling of no few paintings and one new broom that Snape had apparently had something to do with, followed by a ticket to join them at the first game it had been used in (provincial, but enthusiastic, most enthusiastic, and very well catered as such things went). And of course he'd been asked to dine at Rosier Hall many times by older generations.

He'd never been here before.

Evan laughed. "Oh— it's mostly from Severus. Only, I sat him down at lunch yesterday and forced him practically at wand-point to do the decent for all the people you gave us a chance to meet at the conference. You know how he gets. If he hates it he wants to just plow through and be done, so he was at it _all afternoon._ We wanted to thank you for getting him in, but even if he hadn't rebelled at the idea of writing even one more card, his poor hand was all cramped and his handwriting would have been even worse than usual. So I thought I'd better do the inviting."

"'We' wanted to thank me, eh?" asked Horace shrewdly.

Evan crinkled his eyes at him. "No, honestly, he did. I mean, yes, obviously he hated it, but he still appreciated the opportunity. I just hope he doesn't take it too hard when it turns out to have been all for nothing," he added philosophically.

Horace stared. He'd scarcely sat down. Surely the boy wasn't asking for help this early into a visit? "Not for nothing, surely," he protested experimentally.

It wasn't Evan Rosier's reply (a graceful and pretty piece of gratitude for his own new commissions and new friends, followed by a rather difficult to follow but very enthusiastic few minutes about how much fun it was to paint outside in the country, where the animals just looked at you funny and went back to chomping on enormous tufts of grass instead of scampering away. And something about natural light being a challenge to keep up with, which didn't sound like a good thing to Horace, but Evan sounded quite enthusiastic about that as well) that reassured him they hadn't lost their minds, though, but Severus Snape coming back in from the kitchen with a tray. It had the expected tea and sandwiches and scones, but Severus had also brought out a steaming pie-dish, smallish but deep. It was a plenitude that would take time to eat: he wasn't being hurried.

Seeing his eyes on it, Severus explained, "Blackcurrant. The curd for the scones is pineapple, but I thought you must get tired of it."

"I tried to explain the point of an advertised-favorite," Evan sighed, and shrugged, "but."

"If he doesn't like the pie there's enough finger-food to choke a troll," Severus told Evan irritably. "And if you don't like it we can fob it off on Bones or the Fudges. I just thought the man must _be_ half pineapple by now."

"You just thought if you had to smell crystallized fruit you'd gag," Evan corrected him, patting his shoulder and winking at Horace.

Severus's eyes flitted all the way right and left once or twice, putting on a show, although Horace wasn't sure which of them it was meant to amuse. Grudgingly, he admitted, "It is a fact universally acknowledged that the aroma of a baking pie adds to the ambiance of any residence. Provided it isn't allowed to burn."

"And it smells delicious, indeed," Horace ended the floor show. "By all means, m'boy, let's have at it."

Being at bottom a sensible lad under the drooping eyelashes and questionably wide selection of scented oils in his studio, Evan refrained from unsettling Horace further while they were eating. It hadn't been long since they'd seen each other, but still, Horace had been to a Hobgoblins concert (the music wasn't at all to his taste, but that was of no account. Good old Cyrano Boardman was a perfectly delightful chap, whatever he was letting his fans call him these days, and didn't loom over a fellow like your athletic types did) and a garden party or two, which had had their notable moments.

There was always the paper and the Ministry to discuss, of course. Barty Crouch had some sort of billywig in his bonnet. No one seemed to know what he was planning, exactly, but he'd made it quite clear that he was taking these disappearances that were becoming more common as a personal insult. Abraxas Malfoy had been asked to comment in an article about them, and had used the opportunity to gloat about his new grandson and stir up fear of Muggles at the same time, in a _what sort of world will our children inherit_ sort of way. Efficient, Horace had to admit, if pompous and rather a sad waste of a chance to be quoted.

Horace also felt obliged to pass along some news along similar lines that he felt was perfectly lovely, himself, but had to be a bit careful in presenting. As delicate as he tried to be, though, poor Severus's face slammed all over stone-like and he got up without ceremony and left the room. "Oh, dear," Horace sighed. "I did hope he'd get over her, now she's married."

"I don't think you get over it when someone you thought was safe to share all your secrets with gives her body and loyalty to someone who used to bounce out of bed every morning sparkling with glee over the new ways to torture you he'd dreamed up overnight," Evan said calmly, sipping his tea. "Worrying, if nothing else."

"Oh, I'm sure you're exaggerating, m'boy," Horace frowned, setting his sandwich triangle down uneasily.

"Not much." Another sip. "That day you sat on our House meeting, in my fifth year, when we decided no one should ever be in public alone and you set up that contest for us to get our reflexes and aim in shape by the end of the year, do you remember?"

"Of course I do. You prefects managed the meeting quite handily, I thought." He winked. "And acting-prefects, of course."

Evan dipped his head in thanks, but he didn't smile even at having Severus included in the compliment. "I know you sometimes didn't think it was wisest to know the details," he said. "Did you know them then?" Without waiting for an answer, he went on, "Sirius and Potter had him half-stripped when I got there. If Goldstein hadn't fetched me when she did, I don't know how far it would have gone." He held Horace's eyes levelly, his own for once more steel than green, set against the cool colors of his flat, his hair standing out like fire. "Severus was _completely off his head_ that whole meeting, Professor. He was having a memory lapse the whole time, no spells involved, not one. Just shock. Do you know what it takes to put Severus in shock? He used to get off the train to school with broken bones. He may have a few sore spots, but he's not a fainting primrose, Professor. I'm not exaggerating much."

"I was saddened to see how much difficulty some of the boys in your year had in finding work," Horace said placidly, since this was clearly not a mere statement of fact, tipping his head very, very slightly.

It had been evident at the time that Rosier and Miss Black had been quite set on handling the matter themselves. If they'd wanted something more from him than keeping ignorant and out of their way, as he thought Rosier was hinting now, they ought to have signaled as much. He wouldn't have dreamed of stepping on the operations of _those_ families without an invitation.

In fact he'd nearly burst his buttons over how little under-the-table assistance they'd needed. Only been a matter of confirming to the occasional paterfamilias that their campaign wasn't grown out of any baseless schoolyard spite or silly rumor, really. "It was something of a surprise to their parents, but I'm afraid there was really very little I could do. One can't manufacture offers out of thin air, you know."

"Speaking of surprises," Evan said, refilling Horace's cup and piling the sugar in just the way he liked it. He didn't give the gesture the air of a reward for noticing, though, or for allowing Evan and Narcissa's revenge to go through unhindered. "There was always something that puzzled me. I was a bit distracted at the time, you understand, but it was something I'd never seen you do before, so it caught my eye."

"What was that, m'boy?"

Evan scratched his head meditatively. "Probably nothing, really, just one of those things a painter-in-training notices and attaches all sorts of notions to." He grinned. "You should have seen some of the sketches I did before they let me at the oils—people from around the school in all _sorts_ of costumes, odd backdrops, just playing around, you know how it is, just spinning fancies. I probably am exaggerating this one. It was just, I was watching the room when Severus was explaining what he thought we ought to do to keep the kids safe, and, Professor, I could've sworn you wanted to eat him like an ice mouse." He grinned again, this one saying, _silly, right?_

"Oh, hardly to eat him, my dear boy," Horace laughed. "No, no, no, I hope you aren't thinking anything unsavory of me! I was extraordinarily impressed with our Severus, as a matter of fact. He was a bit muddled, as one might expect from a fifth-year even on a good day—that is to say, if he wasn't well no one could blame him, but he didn't look it. I don't mean that sort of muddled. Only that his planning needed a bit of polish. But I hadn't seen him be so open about his priorities before, and I was quite pleased."

Pleased had not been the word, as a matter of fact. By that point, it had been three years or more since Horace had enjoyed his job.

Oh, there were always a few children who liked and excelled at his subject. Ones who weren't obsessive, prematurely pedantic sourpusses with a penchant for giving their teachers Judgment Day eyes, mind: children who were _children_ and gave and took joy. And there was always the gratitude of his alumni, both the sowing and the reaping.

For quite some time, though, that had been about it. His colleagues were all lovely people, of course, taken out of context, lovely people. The more the children set themselves at war with each other, though, the more their guardians seemed determined to blame each other. It had all gotten thoroughly nasty. Poor young Minerva had been entirely out of her depth, Flitwick and Pomona had become quite sanctimonious, and the professors who merely taught had reached heights of shrillness previously associated only with banshees.

None of them but Albus understood, not even a little, why Horace was ever-hesitant to come down on his students too heavy-handedly. Of course, part of it was that the qualities of the Houses couldn't be taught, they were in the children's natures.

That was the whole point. Where the Hat had made a mistake, or given in to aspiration against its better judgment, there was no use in fussing, one simply had to carry on. If a Slytherin didn't have the ambition to make what they could of school, the vision to work out what was needed when the requirements, unlike in life, were all laid out for them clearly, and the cleverness to find a way, there was really only so much Horace would ever be able to do for them.

And if anyone, in any House, couldn't convince _him_ to make an effort for them, when he was living right in the same building with them for seven years, making it very clear to everyone exactly how he expected to be convinced, they were utterly hopeless and any effort he did make would be wasted. They'd simply shrivel in any circle he could introduce them into. You could show them how to flap, but not fly for them.

No, teaching by example was best. It made his students work for their lessons, taught them never to stop paying attention, and those who learned anything learned well. The contrast with his classroom lessons, where most students dutifully memorized what he told them and forgot it immediately after exams, was remarkable.

That was why he was disinclined to haunt his Common Room like Pomona and cheer and scold his brood for every little thing they did. As to why he knew he mustn't jump in to try to turn their tide, that was a younger shame. Even Albus only grasped the corner of it, having made his own Great Mistake.

But Albus's was done with and over. Horace could still hear the whispers of his own echoing through his dungeons, small mirrors of his brightest and most promising young stars parroting a devotion to inflexibility and a fear of change that anyone with a five-minute's introduction to the values of Slytherin House should have understood to be anathema.

A one-minute's introduction. One Sorting. One song. Any one.

And at the same time a furious, whispered debated had started up about whether the Statute of Secrecy was more important than ever or had quite outlived its usefulness. And, if the latter, whether that meant that the world should begin to open gently to the wider one, or do what Grindelwald had failed at and take it over before its weapons got any better and its factories turned the air quite black again.

He hadn't heard a Slytherin take the open-hearted position in twenty years, but just because two disagreed on the matter of secrecy-or-dominance didn't mean they opposed each other on anything else. Everyone seemed to feel that the question was important but not to be resolved hastily, and so far was less important than questions like who on the Prophet was in financial difficulties, and what was it really fair to call Dark magic, and exactly how much muggle a wizard had to have in their ancestry before being considered subhuman.

And, once this had been determined, how could Hogwarts be convinced to keep them out when the authority of the Board of Governors was arguably (as demonstrated by two hundred years of argument) by consent? When the magic of the school that invested the Headmaster was older than the Ministry by centuries and was, in the secret nightmares of no few political hearts, suspected of being not only uninterested in but completely deaf to it?

The distressing nonsense hadn't been popping up only at the school, by any means: it had been everywhere, and still was. Young people were always the loudest and most impassioned, though. Walking past a gaggle of them was the easiest way to find out what their parents thought. Only, Horace wanted to know only slightly less than he wanted to be known to know.

That year had been particularly dreadful. It had been unending months of guerrilla war in the student body, with some of his own students proving themselves remarkably unpleasant and their parents refusing to take the hint to take them in hand.

Then Horace's very worst headache, despite all the astonishing clumsiness and regrettable personality issues, had proven himself congenitally incapable of being intimidated, prone to take command quite effectively without a scrap of authority or status, rather good at tutoring (if in a traumatic sort of way), and one of those students in Horace's own subject that a teacher is lucky to see in a generation.

Not that anyone pinned by those gimlet eyes or with one of his dreadful essays to plow through had ever felt lucky to have him in class. Flitwick claimed to have, but Horace was sure he was just being perverse to start a row: the thing was impossible. Horace had infinitely preferred Lily Evans's less blazing but still quite remarkable talent, and not just because it didn't glare at him as if he were getting everything wrong.

But then that headache had been tugged by the arm, looking grey under his skin and thoroughly concussed, into a House meeting with some of the grimmest, angriest undertones Horace had ever had the displeasure of sitting through.

And he'd irritably snapped a house of homicidal purebloods away from the open war they'd been slavering for. Had demanded of them instead that they protect each other, and shame their attackers with excellence.

He'd had help, naturally; any penniless halfblood who'd tried to tell the Slytherin Common Room what to do in his own name would have been eaten for pudding no matter what. As Horace had just remarked to Rosier, the fifth and sixth-year prefects who'd been ostensibly running that meeting had done yeoman work, building a scaffold of authority under Snape's plan and polishing it up. Not to mention excelling at the herculean task of keeping the students who would have made a breakfast of him mollified and under control. Still, it had seemed at the time like the first pinprick of light at the end of a very long tunnel.

Horace had gotten over that, of course, hadn't felt desperate to get out in years. The next year the so-called Fenshaw Plan of walking in threes and polishing their collective public face had proven effective—in terms of safety, at least. Hufflepuff won the Cup that year, and Gryffindor the year after, but Horace still counted it as a win. It also helped that the year with the most difficult students in it had begun their NEWT classes, and the form with the very most difficult students had never been especially interested in getting the lower years in their House caught up in their nonsense. Horace's own House still had its internal problems, but tensions had plummeted in the staff room, and the castle became quite a jolly place to live and work in again.

In that moment, though, at the end of that perfectly horrible year, it had felt like a lifeline dropping into his lap. If he'd been careless with his face for a moment, barely any of the children had even been turned in his direction and the rest, he'd thought, had been thoroughly occupied. "Quite pleased," he repeated.

"Oh, nothing unsavory, Professor," Evan assured him earnestly. "It was only, I'd never seen you with any sort of a snake expression before. I was terribly startled!"

Horace eyed Rosier, chuckling, as he wagged his finger and made some remark about not underestimating one's own Head of House. It was such an artless, ingenuous face, but Rosier had been sitting on that observation for four years, and hadn't brought it out until they were in his own flat with his flatmate out of the room. If Horace had been invited just to be thanked for the conference invitation, he'd eat his boots.

"Professor," Rosier said, looking him dead in the eye, "I would never." He stretched and frowned. "Where _has_ Severus got to? _SPIKE?"_

"WHAT?" a cross voice yelled back from some other room.

Evan's eyes bugged out slightly in helpless despair, begging Horace more for commiseration than forbearance, and he started massaging his temples. "Spike, _tell_ me you didn't abandon a guest for the cauldron."

"It's _Professor Slughorn,_ " the cross voice retorted, as though Horace being Horace was supposed to make everything make sense and magically cease to be unutterably rude.

They waited, but that was it. After a moment, hand now plastered over his eyes, Evan tried, "Was that meant to mean that you're not abandoning him because he's allowed in?"

" _Obviously._ "

"The only reason that's even _comprehensible_ is you told me you let him help with your potion at work, you oyster," Evan muttered, and sighed. He scrubbed down his face far enough to look sadly at Horace over his fingers. "In fact you're being honored, you realize. As a stillroom non-menace. I quite see it's abysmal, but there you are."

 _You ought to be on the stage, my lad_ , thought Horace. He pried himself up out of the armchair with a groan, rhetorically asking, "Well, what sort of ingrate would snub such an exclusive privilege?"

"Second door on the left," Evan apologized. Horace patted him on the shoulder on the way.

If the sitting room had been a surprise, the stillroom was very nearly a homecoming. Horace could see his own training everywhere, all the more sharply for Snape's total apparent disinterest in style or comfort, let alone adornment. Tools were on wall-racks, not jumbled in drawers or jars or convenient take-away containers, grouped by type, then material, then size. Snape had opted for a sensible (but no longer desperate) economy everywhere, with the possible exception of his ingredients and the definite exception of his cauldrons. Nothing ornate or silly there, but here was one student (possibly _the_ one) who had believed Horace about the cauldron being the one tool whose imperfections both affected the quality of the potions and could (or at least should) not be amended by anyone but a smith who specialized in them.

Horace dearly hoped Severus had asked his friends for loans to pay for them, or paid in installments, or something of that nature, rather than starved and worked himself blue through months of midnight with inferior equipment to pay for them, or not starved but taken time from his NEWT studies. He doubted it.

The ingredients were in tins and in jars and vials of dark glass, to protect them from light, and even the glass door of their cabinet was blue, not clear. The cabinet was quite cool to the touch, too, when Horace wandered over. It was a tragedy how many young brewers frittered away the potency of their ingredients by using clear glass and neglecting their chilling charms. Stasis charms were just as good, of course, if not better, but it was hardly surprising that anyone, even Snape, who'd been known to snatch his classmates' dangerously-bubbling cauldrons off the flames with bare hands (generally while shrieking at them like a baritone beansidhe and thereby running the risk of everyone else ruining their own potions out of sheer startlement), should go the cooling route in August.

The workbench wasn't half the disaster the one in the Wolfbane Project's lab had been, and what Snape was doing today looked more like brewing a potion than dancing a jig. He was currently detaching squid hooks from their suckers, but he seemed to have been brewing for a while before the pause for hospitality. There were a few vials already filled on a table by the window, on a rack in front of some occupied single-rat lab terrariums. While there was a stillroom book on a stand, it was closed. A handwritten recipe on a piece of parchment had been stuck to the front of it, without a heading, in a rather larger hand than Horace had ever persuaded Snape to favor him with.

"Tidy," Horace approved.

Severus glanced up at him, flushing a bit as the praise affected him, clearly against his will. He cut the next hook out a bit more emphatically than was probably necessary, and then looked up again with what Horace liked to call his What Was That Bloody Hat Thinking face, the one that drilled right through you and promised no detours for even the most basic civilities. "Evan told you our grant's going to be cut."

"Now, now, nil desperandum, m'boy," Horace advised, pulling up a stool. He would have liked to make it a bit more comfortable, but it wasn't his workroom.

"He got a credible tip from a reliable source yesterday afternoon," Severus said flatly. "Nothing solid, but the sort of intangible you don't bet against."

"You convinced quite a number of eminent potioneers at that conference that your cause was at least worth a letter, Severus," Horace told him. "The grant review board will have been getting no end of lobbying from the potions guilds, and I understand the werewolves have been speaking up on their own behalf."

"Well, that was stupid of them," Severus sighed, and stabbed morosely at his tentacle.

"They've been very civil," protested Horace.

"It doesn't matter what they do or how they do it, there are people on that board who _hate_ them, guts and breath. They shouldn't have rubbed those people's noses in the fact that they're not abstracts but physically share this world and have agency they can use when they decide to."

Horace couldn't help smiling. For a lad who was so hopeless himself, Severus did have a knack for laying a tangle out clearly. "Come now, I know for a fact that dear Narcissa is on your side in this. You wouldn't bet against her, would you?"

Severus put the knife down and looked at him. It was a judicious look, but not one of those Your Heart Is Heavy Against The Feather On My Scales stares he'd used to pin Horace with in class. "She's not the only Interest who seems to have taken an interest against whom I wouldn't bet. And one of the reasons I wouldn't bet against _her_ ," he said slowly, "is that she knows when to cut her losses. She can recognize a battle that should be surrendered to a war that must not be lost."

A moment of silence, and he added, "So do I," and slid Horace the bronze mortar and pestle across the table. Horace's brows furrowed, but that seemed to be all he was getting. He shrugged, looked at the recipe, and started crushing the startling ruby-red liplike buds of _Psychotria elata_.

They worked in a silence that was almost comfortable for nearly half an hour, while Horace tore the visit apart in his head over and over, trying to work out what in Ninian's lake was going on. It was a very pretty little puzzle, he had to hand it to them.

The only thing he could think of was that Severus might be hoping for a hand-up towards some new job. The problem there, of course, was that Horace had just given him one. Severus had made dozens of new connections and impressed half the potioneers in Europe with his wit and talent. Even if he'd also impressed about two-thirds of those less favorably with fair warning of what he'd be like to work with, that still left a good handful who hadn't been put off by his manner. More than enough to give him a place to start without bringing Horace into it again, at any rate.

When Severus had put out his fire and siphoned a stream of a potion the purple-green of seaweed into a vial, Horace said, "I'm not familiar with that one, m'boy. What was it?"

Severus gave him a look that was almost as tired as it was bland. "Oh, just one of any number of little _gems_ that any number of people are absolutely positive I'm desperately interested in and know I have unusually easy access to. I've a few more over here, worked them up just since yesterday. Quick and easy, no trouble at all, though I may say without modesty that not everyone would think so. But here, have a look, you'll be really interested." His deep voice was about as gloomy as the bottom of a midnight swamp, and for all that his face looked weary as he took out the eyedropper, his eyes on Horace were as sharp and speaking as Horace had ever seen them.

The first potion, one drop, went into the first rat's water. One thirst spell and two long minutes of agonized writhing later, the terrarium was empty except for a furry rat-skin.

The second potion, one drop, was released onto the second terrarium's floor, and the top was put on very quickly. The drop dissipated almost as quickly, and… Horace could recognize death by choking when he saw it, even in a rat.

The potion Horace had helped with, one drop, was placed on the third rat's back. It bubbled straight through, although it took a few seconds. Severus didn't let the rat scream and try to drag its paralyzed back end around for long before a second drop between its ears felled it.

It took three drops of the fourth potion in its water to shrivel the fourth rat into a shrunken mummy the size of a matchstick, but that wasn't much comfort.

The rats were all dead, but Horace could still hear the squealing.

Skeletal fingers steered him gently by the elbow back into the sitting room, back into the armchair. Rosier had gone. Horace heard a warming spell murmured, and dragged his eyes up to Severus's face. It wasn't as shocked as he felt, more bleakly resolute than sick, but it was just as grey.

Severus poured a cup of tea, spooned three sugars into it. He took a sip and passed the cup to Horace before pouring an unsweetened one for himself. They drank in silence, until Horace put his cup down and opened his mouth.

The poisoner's expression was a silencing. He put his cup down, too, and leaned forward, all long bones dressed in tomb shades, his colorless holes of eyes catching Horace's up as if nothing in the dust of time had ever been of more moment. He took a breath, and swallowed, and set his pale and hollow jaw.

"Please," Severus enjoined Horace quietly. "Resign."

He held the gaze steady for just a moment longer, while Horace searched as hard as he could for any threat or menace in those steely, steady, urgent eyes, but stood without waiting for an answer. Giving Horace a stiff, formal half-bow, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the hall, into a room further back in the flat. It wasn't the stillroom.

Horace considered the merits of having another cup of tea. He considered eating the last slice of pie. Then he pushed himself up out of the very comfortable armchair and, at a casual and dignified and perfectly unremarkable stroll, bolted out of the flat, down the stairs, and out into the sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No rats were harmed in the making of this chapter. Some serpents were traumatized.
> 
>  **Notes** : Severus has read Austen because Lily made him. Not because Lily liked it, but because she'd been told it was funny and she thought maybe he'd know bloody why. (He did, but he still couldn't explain it to her.)
> 
> As referenced in story notes above, the first time I tackled this scene was in my 2007 fic Distillation, Observed, which was inspired by Atdelphi/Delphi's [Friends and Wine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/39822). The latter set during HPB, and is not so much about slash as belated growing-up, slow and difficult trust, Slytherin, companionship, the loneliness that's just-my-life-and-all-is-well until it's not, fear, the hidden edges of war, Slytherin, and, of course, oenology.


	5. Still Dye-Urn, Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Severus has a job interview which is not clearly understood from the start by all parties involved to be essentially bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Deconstruction, exposition, political cynicism, and the Terrible Tangent Twins. 
> 
> **Notes and Credit/Fingerpointing** : This chapter is so long that I will be posting it in three parts, as three chapters. If anyone is ever tempted to think that my wonderful and encouraging beta psyche_girl is not doing her job, I submit to you as evidence that this chapter was originally normal-length and very nearly devoid of both nuance and reflection. (Although I still think comparing it to a Remus chapter was harsh…)
> 
> I'm still not sure what day will be Posting Day, sorry about that. New Job is new, and Old Job is... not quit yet, and my schedule is both erratic and overwhelming atm. Will be the week of the turn of the month—probably Tuesday or Thursday but I can't say for sure.

"Shut up," Severus mumbled into his palms, his fingernails digging into his forehead.

"And while I personally would hesitate to use the word 'panic,'" Evan continued jovially.

That expression on that face sent a bit of a chill down Filius's spine, considering how often he'd seen one so much like it in the papers, magnanimously pronouncing what was going to be forced on people for their own and the greater good. This face was, while just as long as the one that haunted them all, not so delicate or vulpine, the chin either softer (whose wasn't?) or just held that way. There were no tight, uncompromising furrows drawing or bracketing the infamous shape of the mouth below the longer, waving, ruddier hair—a shape which could, unmarred by impatience and contempt, still be called generous.

Currently the eyes would have been unnerving Filius anyway, unaccustomed as he was to seeing any particular sign of sentience tucked away in there. With their lids up for the first time, however, he could see they were a bright greenish-blue, not starkly stone-grey at all. The skin around them was smooth, not even beginning to show where its lines would settle, and all the laughter in them was warm, so that their too-familiar slant didn't look wolfish at all.

Lost in his own mortification and unaware of Filius's discomfiting reverie on variations on a bloodline, and whether a pureblooded portraitist might have read Dorian Gray, and if not whether he ought to be encouraged to or kept away from it at all costs, Severus moaned, " _Shut uuuuuuup._ "

"I think we might be willing to concede," the old enemy's great-aunt's cousin went on gravely, eyes doing something so horribly close to the paler blue Albus Twinkle that Filius would have been tempted to drink the whole bottle of cider by himself out of sheer cognitive dissonance if he hadn't rather suspected that they two (three? Probably three) were of one mind about how badly Severus needed a mug of cocoa and a scratch behind the ears, "that we might not have thought out quite _every_ answer to every contingency before approaching the good Professor."

"Would you be willing to concede that, had you found an understatement that massive in a piece of homework Evan had submitted to you as your student," Filius asked Severus, trying hard to stop his mouth twitching, "you'd have been obliged to mark him down for it?"

He was a bit surprised that Severus was letting Evan stay in the room for this conversation at all, as Albus had said that Severus had been most emphatic about protecting Evan from having dangerous information. But Evan had been smilingly and stolidly immovable, and he'd had the good manners to do it by snuggling comfortably into the sofa rather than looming. More, Severus hadn't seemed to expect him to go, and they seemed to have worked as a team on Thursday night.

Under the circumstances, Filius was inclined to think that Albus's information had just been a result of one of Severus's overwrought fits. Since Evan was covered by Severus's paperwork, he was prepared to treat it as such until otherwise indicated.

"I hate everything," Severus sighed pathetically.

"Severus?" Filius prompted expectantly.

" _Yes,_ fine, obviously, all _right,_ I panicked," Severus snapped grumpily, his shoulders hiked all the way up to his ears. "Why is it you coming to chew us out instead of Professor Dumbledore?"

"For one thing, he doesn't know yet," Filius replied, floating a glass of cider over. He hadn't come to scold but to evaluate—at least, not until he _did_ have a handle on the situation—but Severus was one of those boys who never believed you when you told him he wasn't in trouble. The historical evidence was generally on his side, for one thing. "Horace isn't one of us, you know. He didn't rush to report in, he went for a drink. I ran into him at the Three Broomsticks, and he was so unnerved that it wasn't difficult to get the story out of him."

Which would probably have given him the cold sweats, if he didn't have his great-great-great grandfather to thank for a bloodline richer in night vision than adrenaline.

Besides, he judged they were safe enough. Rosmerta didn't use coasters, and there hadn't been any wet rings on Horace's table besides theirs, and Horace had _behaved_ as though Filius had been the first person who'd asked him about his problems since he'd started drinking. Filius had flagged Hagrid over with a few broad hints, complete with eye-rolling and the hand-gestures everyone on staff understood to mean 'go into petty cash if Poppy's out of Hangunder and digestive potions.'

Hagrid was excellent with drunks of all sorts, and he didn't even mind herding duty when they weren't aggressive. Horace didn't have an aggressive bone in his body. He could rely on their good Keeper of the Keys to get Horace safely back to his rooms for a kip, which should give Filius plenty of time to sort things out here.

It was quite safe, as far as keeping Horace's story under wraps went. There was almost no chance that Hagrid would hear anything that he ought not to let slip. The two of them together in the presence of alcohol made an equation that invariably resolved not in teary confidences but in Loud Singing With the Harmonies Taken Very Seriously. Filius was delighted to be missing it this time: the effort they took to hit the notes was usually successful, but always murder on the tempo.

And he really would prefer to have a full picture to take back to Albus before Horace started talking to him and Albus began forming his impressions based on Horace's. Even if what Horace told Albus while sober was considerably more coherent than what Filius had gotten.

What Filius had heard (and what he really thought Horace had been trying to say) was 'Severus tried to frighten me in order to impress me with how afraid he is.' Albus, however, tended to react to anything he saw as a power-grab by examining it through a greed-colored magnifying glass. Filius rather expected that, unless he was given a clear and unbiased analysis which accounted for that possibility, he would jump, leap, and even fly to the conclusion that Horace was telling him, 'Severus tried to intimidate me into running away.'

Which would in fact make no sense, since Albus knew that Severus knew that _Albus knew_ what Severus's position was. Severus trying to force Albus's hand by knocking Horace out of the game, either out of his own ambition or as a genuine ploy on behalf of Riddle, made so little sense that it made Filius's head spin trying to encompass it.

He'd known Albus a long time, though, and Albus just wasn't rational about power games. It made him better than most would have been in his shoes about keeping himself in check—and finally realizing he _was_ more chary than most was the reason he'd started taking on more roles than the strictly academic after the war—but it also gave him a dreadful squint at times.

Everyone had those, of course. That was what colleagues were for.

All in all, it was enough to make Filius feel cautiously optimistic about their new Divination teacher. At the time he'd thought she was using a rather obvious ploy to try to make friends when she'd said her cards had told her it was a propitious day for explorations and she hadn't ventured to the village yet. Maybe she'd been onto something, though, and hadn't just secretly meant that the weather was nice and she'd been skulking timidly around the grounds for nearly a month and Filius looked harmless.

Well, Rosmerta would take care of her, and if she was offended at being abandoned he'd just praise her for knowing Horace would need a friend in his Difficult Time and seeing to it that Filius could Be There For Him. She seemed a nice enough girl; most likely being appreciated, with maybe a new quill as an apology for abandoning her, would make her feel happy about it all.

Severus, who might or might not recognize 'nice' if it shook his hand in the street but had never appeared to wish for an introduction, blinked suspiciously. "Slughorn hates you."

"He doesn't _hate_ Professor Flitwick, Spike, they're in a competition he's not enjoying," Evan said serenely, rubbing Severus's back. Filius had formed that impression himself, based on how Horace merely sniped at him at staff meetings and meals and tried to use students to show him up without making any real attempts to sabotage his career or his nieces'. It was good to have the opinion confirmed by someone who'd studied Horace's methods directly, though. "I agree, though, Professor; you're not who I could have expected him to unload onto."

"Boys," Filius said reproachfully.

They looked at each other. To his pleasure—or, rather, relief—while Even still looked a touch confused, Severus looked as if his worst fears had been at least half-confirmed. "He's not the only person in the world who frequents the same areas as Slughorn and knows how to inveigle," the boy told his friend glumly. "We should have planted a geas after all."

"We agreed he'd respond best to respectful treatment," Evan replied, his voice saying _I am being tactful in public_ and his face asking _are you suicidal?_

A _you're right and I don't have to like it_ sort of grimace pulled Severus's face into very nearly an L-shape. "Well, gotten a promise, at least."

"Would have diluted your impact, Spike."

"Might have been worth it." Severus looked at Filius enquiringly.

"I think you're safe in that area," Filius told him, "at least now I've sent him back to the castle. Though," he added, deciding not to put any severity into his voice because Severus was One Of Those Boys and it would be overkill, "I hope it was a _calculated_ risk."

As he understood it, the boys hadn't had any control at all over the Ministry finding out when young Neville Longbottom had been born. On the other hand, Harry Potter's birthdate had got out because they'd let the Malfoy House Elf, Dobby, stick around to observe the birth (more or less), and failed to lock him down securely for it, or take any measures to ensure his silence, until it was too late.

There were two benign explanations for that. The first was that one or both of them had both understood and realized _at the time_ that Dobby's first and truest master was not Severus's auxiliary Narcissa Malfoy but her husband Lucius, who was not in Severus's confidence, and that Lucius would be closely questioning Dobby on the proceedings. Believing that Lucius would do that and knowing Dobby would be unable to lie to him, trying to persuade Dobby to keep anything from him would have been a stupid risk. with a chance of failure that utterly dwarfed the potential payoff, and they would have been quite right not to try it.

The second was that it had been a rookie mistake: that they'd been so caught up in worrying about all the other, noisier, and more pressing concerns that they'd simply forgotten to think about a little elf whose job was to be helpful and who was staying quiet and out of the way. No good agent forgot about the servants, and Filius wouldn't have expected it of a young man of Severus's background.

There were, however, mitigating factors. Lily had been not only involved but in pain (which, as Filius understood it, put things in a category with asking Albus to think calmly about a wizard proclaiming himself Emperor Tyrannodictatorius Rex The Dark Lord Of All Yggdrasil Who Feasts On The Marrow Of His Subjects' Babies In The Name Of Eris And Kronos), and they were both new and untrained.

Either way, the consequence was that the Longbottom and Potter families were in for a very nasty and stressful time of it, even if Voldemort didn't decide to target either or both of them, because he _might_ decide to at any moment. However, that wasn't Filius's problem right now.

If they'd let Dobby be free to do what he would on purpose because they knew they had to, they'd behaved just as they ought, and he had no problem. If they'd let him go for a different reason, they couldn't be trusted, and he didn't have a problem, exactly, but was going to have to start playing a game that he deeply disliked. If they'd let him go for no reason at all, because they simply hadn't thought about him, he only had a problem if they weren't learning from the mistake.

To his relief, Severus nodded. "I'm not sure I can articulate why," he said, "but I was sure a minimalist conversation would make the most impact on him." Not conclusive, of course—and what agents were capable of in chaotic field conditions should never be compared with what they could do in situations they'd set up and were in control of, naturally—but a good sign.

Evan rolled his eyes. "It's because he's the world's archetypal gossiping sensualist, Spike," he said affectionately, "and five seconds of silence in an occupied room makes him feel something has gone desperately wrong with his whole day."

"…Well, all right, but my thought process involved white gloves, black smoke, and distorted mirrors."

Evan paused over his own cider. "Er?"

"I said I couldn't articulate it. I'm not contractually obligated to give you any more scones, you know," Severus added sulkily to Filius, who was trying not to choke on his drink.

"He did bring the kind of cider you like," Evan pointed out cheerfully. Severus made a grumbling face.

"And," Filius added brightly, "I'm not even going to ask whether your wand is all black and tubular with a little white tip." Of course, he knew it wasn't; he saw more of students' wands than anyone but Minerva, and Severus's was almost bone-pale, with the faintest of rosy-grey tones. He wasn't a wand expert, but you did get to know wood on the dueling circuit, and he'd have thought Severus's was lime or white pine if it hadn't been so whippy.

The only question about Evan's, of course, was whether he'd been offered a selection of dead ancestors' rosewood wands or Ollivander had been told the only options he was allowed to offer the boy were those of length, thickness, and core. Fortunately, Evan and his wand seemed to scrape along well enough together—rather better than his grandfather or his aunt Druella had done with theirs, at any rate, although Druella had had the sense to find herself a replacement. Filius hated it when the pureblood families hobbled their children like that, and in the Rosiers' case it was, as far as he was aware, since they weren't showing any other signs of financial difficulty, nothing but vanity.

Severus (who had tried to dye his wand black at least two times that Filius knew about, speaking of vanity as well as black wands, not to mention an uncharacteristic lack of doing one's homework) glared, and when Evan repeated his interrogative noise, he snapped, "Never _mind._ " Then he got a thoughtful look.

"Spike?"

"No," Severus said, nodding decisively. "It was _definitely_ not a joke worth explaining."

Evan went on looking at him for a little longer than Filius thought the comment deserved, with an edge of calculation under his drooping lashes. Then he shrugged carelessly and sipped at his cider. "If you say so."

Filius wasn't sure whether to hope he hadn't just had an impact on their private life or that his throwaway remark wouldn't come back to bite him. As that had been Severus's _I have a plot to get into the Restricted Section to make my essay THE BEST EVER_ look (wherein for 'best' read 'most disturbing') and not the _I have a plot to get into the Restricted Section to win a fight I can't avoid using shock, awe, and creative mayhem_ one, however, Filius wasn't _overly_ worried about it.

"What I do want to know," he said, putting his socks up on the coffee table and wiggling his toes meditatively, "is why you didn't come to strategize with me and Albus before you plunged right into traumatizing poor Horace."

"Slughorn dithers," Severus replied. "That's time in which to strategize with others such as yourself and Professor We Both Know You Feel I'm Right Deep Down, which going to him first wouldn't have given me. And, as Evan pointed out, Slughorn appreciates being deferred to. The more velvet the gloves he's handled with, the more likely he is regard what's being asked of him as a favor, and he's practically hypnotized himself to _automatically_ do favors for anyone who asks him in the right way, without wanting anything much more in return than a fruit basket and a Christmas card."

Filius started to protest.

"Yes," Evan agreed with him, smiling gently, "but the larger favors he expects for future protégés are, as you might call it, the price of knowing him at all, or of his friendship, or of doing business."

"Or you might call them being given the opportunity to pay past favors forward," Severus said dryly. "However you choose to look at it, a relationship with him isn't a balance sheet. It's the occasional great benefit on one side, and a thousand small remembrances and tedia on the other."

"Not a word, tedia," Evan murmured into his tea. Filius might have remarked to him that language was always changing, and that if a spoken word was understandable and apt it soon would a generally-known one. However, Evan's eyes had crinkled warmly above his teacup as he spoke, so Filius judged he was only playing some gentle private game and needed no instruction.

Severus waved crisply airy dismissal, not in any way chastened. "Regardless. If we hadn't spoken to him first, we would have been _managing_ him in a way he would have recognized, and he would have had every right to be offended."

Filius paused with a scone halfway to his mouth. "But doesn't that mean that by speaking to him first you were still managing him?"

Evan smiled. "Yes," he explained, "but, you see, they're the rules he wrote himself for the game he wants us all to play. The difference is between manipulation and etiquette."

"Don't ask him to explain what that difference is," Severus put in gloomily. "It goes on for hours and doesn't get you any further than 'the game's been agreed on.' Even when it hasn't, in fact, been _agreed_ on and you're absolutely certain that the real question is who's manipulating whom and whether it counts as manipulation if everyone involved knows it's going on. Asking is useless, trust me on this."

"Severus, I wasn't going to forget you're twenty-one just because you've been out of school a few terms," Filius assured him, mouth twitching again. "We did your paperwork less than two weeks ago."

" _I will burn all the scones right now._ "

"I'm twenty-one, too, and I understand it," Evan pointed out. He took a tranquil bite of scone, presumably so as to semi-rescue one from the flames, and added cheerfully, "I'm _four months less_ twenty-one."

"Three," Severus growled.

Evan made an _eh_ noise and waggled a hand, indicating with remarkable eloquence for such a languid gesture that surely it was of no moment whether one rounded up or down.

"You didn't spend all your time at school giving me twenty-foot essays when I'd asked for five pages," Filius reminded him, trying less hard not to smile. This was such wild exaggeration as to be slander, but it was fact that nine times out of ten the footnotes had come on a separate scroll.

" _Into ash and little curls of fragrant steam."_

"I'm sure he just meant I actually attended the Slug Club meetings," Evan placated him.

" _The hatred for everything is all-encompassing._ "

"That was redundant, wasn't it?"

" _No,_ " Severus snarled, "because the hatred for everything encompasses the entirety of _me._ "

"Ahhhh."

Filius rather got the impression his presence was getting in the way of some tender gesture Evan was sorely tempted to slip under the gates of Severus's sulk.

"Anyway, you _don't_ understand it, or you could explain it properly. You just do it instinctively," Severus added crossly.

"Is there a difference?"

"ALL-ENCOMPASSING." He glared at them both. "All right. Possibly precipitate reaction to stimulus stipulated. Did you just come to mock, Professor?"

"Oh, Severus, of course not. I thought we'd start with how deluded Horace is about what you were trying to tell him, and go from there."

"Do you think he was very deluded?" Evan asked. Filus had never seen him like that, leaning forward on his elbows with his eyes gleaming raptly. If he hadn't been leaning sideways over Severus's shoulder with a foot sneaking around the other young man's ankle, it would have been disconcerting, but as it was there was something soft about it.

Severus slid him a funny look anyway, seeming uncomfortable.

He looked back, and they exchanged a little conversation with frowns and eyebrows. It was Severus who gave in, despite still seeming uncomfortable as well as perplexed, and Evan settled farther onto his shoulder.

Filius decided he was best off by far pretending that none of that had happened. Just like he'd pretended Evan hadn't met him at the door wearing nothing but a dressing gown embroidered with thorny vines and the most unhappy, unwelcoming look Filius had ever seen on him. And that there hadn't been blotchy, irregular red patches poking out just slightly from under Severus's crisp green-brown collar and cuffs (which were in actual fact not there anymore, having faded away while Evan was changing). Severus had put Evan Rosier before Narcissa Malfoy on his list of auxiliary crew, before Regulus Black on the list of people he wanted Albus to protect (though not before Lily Potter), and before his mother on his list of emergency contacts and medical proxies. That probably covered what Filius needed to know.

"I think he was very drunk," he answered. "I'm reserving judgment on deluded." He looked at them expectantly.

Severus looked back at him warily. Filius could handle that, but Evan was giving him big excited tell-me-tell-me-tell-me eyes. Filius, never having had a puppy, didn't quite know how to react to that. It certainly wasn't an expression he ever got from his students, except on the rare occasion one of them worked out that he'd lived through their history homework and was a better speaker than Cuthbert, or at least more likely to use visuals and anecdotes.

That was an excited look he would have given in to, but this wasn't that sort of well-intentioned-and-desperate. It wasn't quite the same as the typical MI-20 field agent new-toy-I-want-it-I-want-it-I-want-it expression, either: no drooling, and therefore he had no instinctive reaction to kick it firmly out of his office with a leviosa and a lecture about responsibility. He thought the last time he'd seen anything like it was when his youngest niece had last asked him for a bedtime story, but since always she'd used the same expression whether she was allowed to have another one or not, he couldn't tell whether the look was innocuous or disingenuous. That had been a long time ago, anyway.

Filius hooked a thumb at Eager-eyes and cocked an eyebrow at Severus. "He's odd," Severus didn't-actually-explain. "One becomes accustomed."

"One becomes accustomed to odd very often in Ravenclaw, but not like that," Filius remarked.

Which might have been, he realized at once, a bit unfair. _Lots_ of his students were apathetic and disengaged until one hit on their subjects of interest and they suddenly sat up straight and developed expressions and started gesturing energetically all over the place. It was true, though, that his students were more likely to talk your ear off about their own research until they noticed you were not only asleep but covered in dust and cobwebs than snuggle their subjects like teddy bears and stare eagerly at you until you gave up every thought you'd ever had.

It wasn't, as far as he could tell, a Slytherin sort of odd, either. You did occasionally see Hufflepuffs giving their spouses and sweethearts the reverse-arm-candy treatment, the one that screamed _I am so proud to be the ornament of this brilliant/powerful person,_ and it wasn't terribly uncommon for Slytherins to honor each other or flatter a Hufflepuff plus-one with it at a showy or formal gathering.

Filius had never seen it done in private before, and certainly he'd never seen it pulled on someone who was so obviously being made uncomfortable by it. That seemed counterproductive. Therefore either Evan was not only odd but _brokenly insane_ (which he didn't think was the case, because Severus, while more than a bit of a twitch and not _good_ with people, wasn't _stupid_ about them or stupid generally), or Filius was missing a great deal of information. Even if the latter was, as he suspected, the case, though, it was definitely odd behavior for a Slytherin. If he'd had to name it, in fact, he would have said 'home-schooled.'

Except that, no, that didn't seem right, either. Evan behaved beautifully in public, and Filius had never thought anything was _strange_ about him before.

Except, at least, that his in-class presentation (a bit like that of the so-called Marauders but in a less exciting way) had consistently led his teachers to be pleasantly surprised by his academic performance whenever they actually stopped to realize that the papers they were marking had been written by the boy who was generally gazing out the window with a rather vacant expression. And had really been written by him: his handwriting was a bit, er, rococo for even the Love Letter line of dictaquills.

It was even clear to everyone that they'd been _composed_ by him, although he rarely cited sources that Snape and Miss Black didn't. Miss Black had generally got her facts more or less right, but most of her efforts had clearly been spent towards composition, and her essays had tended to read like letters from a concerned relative who was very gently concerned that her teachers should understand clearly what they were getting themselves into before making a decision about whether or not to use whatever magic the subject had been. Rosier's were, however baroquely written, plainly _stated._

And Filius knew he hadn't been getting Snape to tell him what to write. Filius had, on at least four occasions, kept Snape after class to make him explain sets-of-paragraphs in which Filius had been quite certain the boy fully understood the principle involved but had fallen all over his quill trying to explain himself—and on three of those occasions, Rosier had neatly summed up the concept Snape had exploded all over in one or two laconic sentences. Snape's essays always showed more depth of understanding, even when that understanding was rather confused in substance as well as expression, but there were only two students in that form who put things plainly and succinctly. Of the two, it was only Avery who'd consistently earned marks below-or-well-below an E, except when the Quidditch pitch was churning. It was just that Avery always seemed to be trying harder. By far.

But putting up an empty-headed front over a perfectly competent mind was far from an unheard of choice, except in his own House, although Filius had sadly noted over the years that it was still a more common one among witches.

No, Evan behaved quite within acceptable norms while in public. It was only now that Filius was speaking with the young wizard privately and in his own home that he was noticing socialization anomalies. And now that he'd realized that, he realized that they were even more glaring because Severus was still every inch the Severus that Filius knew from office hours and Music Club and the other odd extracurricular encounter.

He shrugged, ignoring the winning smile being aimed at him. "As I understood it, he'd been told to resign in your favor because you were about to be given a lot of free time for the express purpose of dumping into all reservoirs everywhere a lot of poisons no one else had ever heard of."

The boys glanced at each other. "We're extrapolating," Severus admitted. "And 'all reservoirs everywhere' is almost certainly hyperbole."

"And the tip wasn't exactly what _you'd_ probably call concrete," Evan agreed.

"But our source was reliable, and about the only margin for error is 'was _his_ source being played,' because I don't believe for a moment that our source was either playing us or being played by his."

"Ours wouldn't," Evan elaborated. "He wouldn't try to play us. He might withhold information, but he doesn't think he's good enough to fool either of us in any other way."

"Even if he wanted to," Severus added, in a slightly reproachful _let me fill in the bit you neglected to mention_ voice.

"And the bloke he got his information from," Evan said, giving Severus an _okay, granted, but not important at this time_ sort of shrug, "goes all seedy and oily when he's being manipulative; it's very obvious and our chap would have noticed."

"Bottom line," Severus opened his hands, "you understood him correctly. I'm quite convinced enough to take it as a working hypothesis that all efforts to preserve my lab's project are being sabotaged by Parties Related To My Consultancy With You for reasons that include freeing me to brew things that around 98% of the population, including myself, would vastly prefer remain unknown."

Filus tapped his scone against his plate thoughtfully, heedless of the glob of cream that slid off of it. "A freedom to be avoided, to be sure."

Severus, he noted, was behaving as though turning the grim assignment down once given wasn't an option that had even crossed his mind. He was ready to contort himself like a ferret turning around in a jam-jar to avoid getting the job in the first place, but he wasn't acting like someone who knew or even hoped that, once asked, he had the option of saying no, or avoiding it, or subverting it.

When he'd been in a lather about finances back in the staffroom at Hogwarts, he'd talked about Evan selling his art to muggles, and finding work in the rather Ministry-skeptical Sherwood wizarding area for himself. As if Europe and all the other continents didn't exist. Filius happened to know he'd been to some of them, and Horace had bragged about an apprenticeship offer in Hong Kong that was open to Severus in the 'if you ever change your mind' sort of way.

Which all meant that Filius was going to have to check for geases, memory charms, and confusion spells before he left. That could wait, no need to go pull the conversation off-track for it, but even if Severus convinced him he had valid reasons to write off his options and his omissions weren't blind spots, it was still a sensible precaution. Possibly one to be taken regularly, just as a safeguard. Certainly if Albus decided to go ahead with this harebrained idea of the boy's.

"And you thought the best solution was to step into a job that's even more difficult and complicated than the one you were just turned down for two months ago? Neither of which, if I may be direct with you, anyone under forty and quite possibly under seventy should even consider, in my opinion."

It wasn't a young man's job to begin with, as he'd told Albus, and in Severus's case, if he began teaching in the 1980-81 academic year, all of his NEWT students would have known him in his OWL year, when the ill-feeling between forms in his year had been at its full force, so many of all ages had behaved so badly, and absolutely everyone knew or suspected he'd taken or dealt out the worst of it. Some of the nasty rumors about things he'd done and that had been done to him would make a sudden comeback if he showed up under any circumstances, let alone in an attempt to take command.

Filius believed almost none of these, although he knew the one involving the pack of lascivious werewolves in the Forbidden Forest in September to at least have started out being loosely based in truth—in that Severus had indeed been caught coming out of the forest long past curfew and scratched up. It hadn't been anywhere near full moon. On that occasion, as he'd explained to Pomona, who'd been the one to collar him, he'd only been gathering wild moonflowers and John the Conquer roots, and had to dive into a some shrubbery, which had turned out to be more brambly than he would have preferred, to avoid one of the pricklier centaurs. What the school had turned that into had been uniformly grotesque, if, in some variants, predictable.

No one could get a straight answer from anyone about whatever had disrupted his OWLs or who had seen it, and the rumors ranged from horrible to criminal to frankly ludicrous. Something had definitely happened, though. Inquiring made Horace's eyes hood over, Poppy's face turn white and red, and Minerva's lips vanish. Albus had just looked sad and said, "Need-to-know, my friend," which couldn't be argued, being well within his rights.

Then there was the time Severus had 'flayed Sirius Black alive and made book-covers out of his hide.' In point of fact he'd turned the other boy's skin nearly transparent, coolly explaining, when charged, "He keeps trying to expose all of _my_ nerves; it's only fair." Minerva had taken, as well as more points than Filius would have, the opportunity to give all her classes a lesson in human anatomy before the effect faded, and Sirius had by all accounts rather enjoyed himself.

He'd also 'turned Peter Pettigrew into a boy-shaped swarm of bees for a week,' which was fact-based only in that a swarm of bees and a boy in Peter's form had briefly become quite closely acquainted. James had amazed Poppy by keeping his head, not flailing about, and only getting three stings. Severus hadn't denied responsibility, only that he'd cursed James, scornfully telling Minerva, "It wasn't even a _hex,_ they were just looking for pollen. They're not going to stay interested in something that doesn't smell like flowers. Word to the wise, Potter—or, at least, of advice: Evans is if possible even less attracted to the delicate aroma of manure than bees are. You won't get anywhere with her smuggling dungbombs in your pockets."

According to Minerva, once enough Minty Migraine Mellower and scotched tea had been applied that she could see enough humor in it to stop growling like her smaller self and be wry instead, James had not only been carrying three dungbombs in his pockets but six fireworks, a vial of stinksap, and a trick wand that looked quite like Severus's and had, when waved, turned back into Aberforth Dumbledore's most cantankerous goat.

But the story about the Sirius-hide book-covers persisted, although sometimes it was shoes or a vest or worse. And the one with its roots in Halloween of '73, and the one about drop-kicking a first-year from the Astronomy tower (it had been a fourth-year pushed through the window of the Slytherin common room into the lake, who'd then been hoisted out of it by the feet before he'd even started to panic or swim. Admittedly, Poppy had reported that Severus had looked shifty when he'd agreed that the upside-down bit had been on purpose to jerk any remaining water out of the boy's lungs).

And the one where he stalked through the night and hung any first-years he could get his hands on up from the ceiling in cocoons to rot until he was ready to suck their juices out with his proboscis. Filius had no idea where _that_ had come from, but it had made all the older Slytherins, including Severus on the rare occasion when he wasn't already in a sensitive mood, look amused. The younger ones had tended to look at each other and giggle and take on I-have-survived-horrors airs that no one over thirteen could possibly take seriously.

But so did the one about cursing the Gryffindor dormitories with a plague of maggots and locusts (which as far as Filius knew had its only origins in Gryffindor boys taking food back to their rooms and not putting proper stasis and vermin-repelling charms on it), and the one about setting Hagrid's hut on fire for refusing to give him unicorn's blood (an accident, according to Hagrid: the Barghest had tried to knock him down for face-washing purposes when he was already jumpy), and the unimaginative vampirism one, and the one about washing his hair in chicken fat, and the one about washing his hair in flobberworm mucus.

And on, and on. And that was what Severus proposed to stir up again by dropping himself into it? He thought he was going to teach complex theory to the teenagers who'd grown up on those stories? He proposed to teach their younger siblings and cousins how to use a knife and control a fire and dissect small animals for ingredients?

Filius could, rather easily, see him settling down in the school in twenty or thirty years, when his nerves had been settled themselves down and all the stories about him had been forgotten or divorced from his name. When he had a solid researcher's reputation behind him to settle any doubts and shame any still-immature taunting that tried to push old buttons.

He could also, equally easily, see the boy trying to control a classroom of fourth-year Gryffindors who'd heard about him from their older brothers and the current older students. A classroom full of fire and volatile mixtures and, most likely, Zonko's products. _That_ was an image that made him want to crawl under a chair with his arms wrapped around his head until it went away, preferably with a bottle of something rather stronger than cider for company.

"I have a different relationship with my potential employer now, which would make it more attainable, as would the subject," Severus said flatly, flat-out ignoring his opinion. "If I secure the post before my orders to become close to said potential employer change to orders to become a supplier, then I'm a valuable operative who tenaciously works to obeys orders no matter how long it takes, not one who picks and chooses between sets of orders."

It was such a blatant, grim-faced avoidance of the age issue that he got the impression that Severus had not so much missed his point as stared gloomily at it and then gotten drunk (or whatever he did instead of getting drunk).

Yesterday. And then had Evan invite Horace over anyway.

Which had to be respected, even while it also had to be argued against. Even if Severus had some idea of what he'd be getting into on that front, it wasn't, as a front, alone.

"But you realize, with Horace gone, you'd be applying for _two_ jobs," Filius said, by way of pointing out only the beginning of the problems. He was disheartened to see them look startled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : Filius has serious reservations, Severus puts his fingers in his ears and shouts LALALALALA, and Godwin's Law does yoga.


	6. Still Dye-Urn, cont'd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filius has serious reservations, Severus puts his fingers in his ears and shouts LALALALALA, and Godwin's Law does yoga.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Deconstruction, exposition, political cynicism, and the Terrible Tangent Twins. Also: see summary.
> 
>  **Temporary notes** : Er... my boss got her first grandchild this week. Early. It's a small business and she and I are the only people doing the part of it I'm involved with in any serious way. Sorry about that. If it's any help, apparently the kid is appropriately cute and very alert and has lots of black hair and shakes her fist at the camera when presented with a handmade bear. We're not sure whether she finds the bear unacceptable or will defend it to the death (or, at least, the drool).

cont’d

“But you realize, with Horace gone, you’d actually be applying for _two_ jobs,” Filius pointed out.

“Not necessarily,” Severus frowned.  “…Would I be?  I know there’d be two opening, but it can’t be a _foregone conclusion._  There’s got to be _someone_ else on staff who was in Slytherin.”

“Imago was, when we were there,” Evan said, “but you said it’ll be this Trelawney witch teaching Divi now.  Wasn’t Kettleburn?”

“Technically, yes, but only for one year,” Filius explained.  Bathsheba Babbling had been, too, but Filius hoped, for Albus’s sake, that he didn’t make her more than a token offer.  She had never showed the slightest envy for or even interest in Horace’s House work, and Filius didn’t think she’d respond well to any real suggestion that she take that much time away from her translations.  “One of his mothers was in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Trading Standards Body, I believe. He spent a year at Hogwarts, one in Durmstrang, one at, er, either Salem or Jamestown, I’ve forgotten, but it certainly wasn’t El Dorado, because he _will_ go on about not having had a chance to meet any chupacabras or jackalopes or quetzalcoatl and so on. And, I think it was, two at Khemet…”

“Also, Kettleburn’s a benign lunatic,” Severus told Evan.  “He may not be in Phil Lovegood’s class, but the second-years would eat him alive.”

Evan’s eyes crinkled at Severus before Filius could decide whether to protest that characterization of his former student (on the one hand, it was unkind and not quite accurate.  On the other hand, Severus’s voice hadn’t been as unkind as his words, and Xenophilius only visited the world of verifiable and objective reality for playdates and to buy ice cream. The enormous amount of time and patience that Filius had for truth-questers and philosophers was significantly reduced when it came to indiscriminate conspiracy nuts).  “Not the first years?”

“He could probably handle them if the prefects could be arsed to run interference,” was the cynical evaluation. “I never saw him lose control of a class, but I’m not sure what he’d fall back on if he didn’t have the implicit threat of lost body parts to explain the merits of shutting up and listening to instructions.  And I’m not at all sure how well he’d have done if our year’s CoMC classes hadn’t been on a warm/cool colored House split.”

“Do you think _you_ could ‘handle them?’” asked Filius (who hadn’t heard the Houses described that way before, and was rather inclined to blame exposure to Narcissa Black more than to a painter), with what even he was aware was perhaps a somewhat birdlike tilt of his head.  If Severus already had detailed hypotheses about what it took to manage a class, that was some support for Filius’s idea that when he’d called Horace it hadn’t been thoughtlessly, or out of the innocent hubris that was fatal to new teachers.  Then again, given the way Filius’s colleagues had tended to complain about what Snape had been like in their classes, he might simply have been taking notes on what worked in class management his whole time at school. Filius hadn’t had the ‘Snape keeps LOOKING at me’ problem, himself, but Charms and Flying usually did have different behavior problems from other classes.  

Besides, in Severus’s year, it had been the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who’d taken a double Charms class together and the Slytherins and Gryffindors who’d each had a separate hour with him.  That had probably made Severus feel as if Filius’s class was the most well-behaved one he’d sat through, apart from History.

(In which he’d probably been one of the only people who could really be described as sitting the class. History was, both traditionally and, alas, in fact, how the overworked and the hypnosis-susceptible caught up on their sleep. And how the irresponsible and the overscheduled caught up on homework they didn’t finish in their extracurricular hours. Therefore it was, also and inevitably, how the industrious and the machinating earned their Hogsmeade money taking notes for the rest.)

And ‘well-behaved’ would not have been how Filius would have described the Slytherin class of ‘78. Severus and Narcissa Black had been the only students in it who were even slightly likely to try to do the spells as the spells were intended to be done. Or, at least, to try them without working out before even starting how to apply them to particular areas of interest such as art, flirtation, cheating at Quidditch from the stands, and pushing other students downstairs.  In addition, Tim Avery kept trying to sneak girlie and Quidditch magazines into his textbook.  

Evan Rosier had, as well, although he’d at least waited to open his until he’d gotten a charm right once. Filius also took into consideration (not everyone had) that in his case the scantily clad persons in the magazines were usually at least two hundred years old and accompanied by urns, cherubs, bunches of grapes, cartoons about Rosier’s classmates and Filius’s colleagues,[1] elaborately inked landscapes and castles he probably would have called doodles, notes on perspective, proportion, skin tone, and speculations about pigment usage.

As for the two so-called ‘good’ students, once Snape had satisfied himself that he had a charm down he would invariably either try to design a variation or start working ahead in the book before either the wandwork or pronunciation for the new charm had been demonstrated.  That had broken Filius’s poor windows more often than all the panicky students in _any other year but that one_ combined. He didn’t come near the Gryffindor form’s record, however (that form was impossible to score individually; the boys rarely acted as individuals, especially Potter and Black major, who were the least careful, and the girls quite naturally often teamed up in self-defense), and his mulish insistence on the practice had paid off beautifully by his NEWT years.

(Not unexpectedly: the reason Filius discouraged this sort of thing wasn’t because it didn’t usually pay off if a student stuck with it. In fact, when he’d first started out at Hogwarts, he’d asked everyone second-year and above to try to realize their charms directly from the books, with assistance but without demonstrations. The resulting chaos and its drag on his lesson plans had, however, been sadly persuasive. As had the mediwizard they’d had at that time, although perhaps ‘persuasive’ was not the word he wanted…)

And once Miss Black had satisfied herself she knew a charm, she distracted other students, whether or not they were still working, either by striking up conversations or by engaging in a form of revision in which she aimed spells she suspected would be on the next exam at their feet under the desks.  Filius was sure there’d been some sort of method or system dictating whom she chose to distract and how, but he had no idea what it was and suspected he was happier that way.

And that was a class where all but one student _was dedicated to learning the material,_ and Avery wasn’t imaginative enough to cause trouble unless he’d been put up to it _._  And, speaking generally, nearly everyone enjoyed Filius’s classes, and looked forward to them.  Even when a student struggled in the subjects, Charms and Flying were broadly understood to be low-pressure classes with minimal lecturing of either the instructive or berating sort, and plenty of activity time in which one might burn off some energy and not be stopped from talking with friends unless one’s work was neglected. And although Filius had occasionally been known to lose his patience and grow a bit sharp when a student insisted on being careless in the same way over and over, he prided himself on being generally approachable, and students did in fact often approach him with questions.  When someone skived off his class, Filius knew there was really something going wrong for them.

And that was just _class,_ and a far easier class to manage than Severus was proposing to take on.  

In Filius’s House, the worst he had to deal with was the occasional clash of personalities or debate-turned-fight that could turn into cliquishness and bullying out of sheer social ineptitude, which could usually be mediated away once everyone’s point of view had been explained to everyone else, providing no one was too pigheaded to admit embarrassment and regret over having misunderstood their friends’ meaning or intentions.

And when a problem couldn’t be mediated away, he could almost always bring the parties involved to feel deeply smug about their own maturity in embracing the idea of agreeing to disagree, shaking hands, and moving on to the next question or problem, which he’d make sure was one they were more likely to be on the same side of, or at least to be able to see in the same light.  Other than that, he was mostly faced with (not to put to fine a point on it) communal blues when the inter-House competition was not considered to be going well or when Ravenclaw was part of the tension-of-the-moment.

Ravenclaw didn’t actively _try_ to be difficult, as a rule.  They just wanted, collectively, to get their work done well (or get good marks, depending) and make their parents proud, or land a good job, or land a job that would give them interesting work, or prove to a specific apprentice-master that they were good enough to be taken on.  

And knock Slytherin out of the water in Gobstones and Chess Club tournaments (which ought to have been at least _almost_ as influential on the point-tallies as Quidditch, but Filius had given up arguing that one).  And keep Hufflepuff or Gryffindor away from the Quidditch cup because strategy ought to beat enthusiasm in a sensible world.  And have a lot of sex and, in recent years, invent ‘interesting’ potions and suffumitories in addition to the usual potentially mind-bending and dimension-shattering experiments.

They didn’t _plot,_ and they didn’t _sneak._

...Except about the sex.  But as a general rule they didn’t.  And even when Filius had first taken the House up, they’d only pushed him a little, to find out whether he was going to be reliably helpful or foolish or a slacker, and to find out whether a little squeaky-voiced chap like him had any way at all of enforcing a curfew or breaking up a fight or finding out where a witch in a pet had hid her roommate’s homework and so on.  Once that had been established, they’d been content to take his role in their lives for granted.

Horace kept on top of his Slytherins largely with the promise that, if they were all he wanted them to be, he’d give them every opportunity to become all _they_ wanted to be.  Severus wouldn’t even be able to pretend that he could make a promise like that; all the students would already know better before he walked in the door.  Just like they’d know the stories about what he had(n’t really) done at school, and that he’d spent his student years in used robes barely hanging together with magical patches and sagging fitting charms, and that not only wasn’t he in their ridiculous  Nature’s Nobility but that, however normal and un-muggle-like a first name he had, his surname was decidedly unwizardly.

A hurdle to be overcome in any House, sadly, even still.  Not an insurmountable one, though—in any other House but Slytherin.  Horace had said it himself: he couldn’t have made Severus a prefect because the pureblood fanatics would have taken a halfblood in authority over them as an insult and a call to arms.  And Severus wanted to try to be their Housemaster?  Ambition was, of course, one of the defining characteristics of the House, but really, was he mad?

“Sod if I know,” Severus said moodily.

“Don’t be _ridiculous,_ Naj,” Evan sighed.

“Well,” Severus explained, turning to him, “I was never working on my own authority before; I could always threaten them with you and Narcissa then.  And I wasn’t actually responsible, I just wanted them to shut up and let us work and not kill each other.”

Filius couldn’t quite see Evan Rosier being used as an effective threat. Even if the young man he was meeting today seemed far capable more than the boy he’d known at school of assisting an MI-20 consultant in such vital and delicate matters as, for example, filing or fetching tea than Filius would ever have suspected from the lad’s behavior at school (which, from a Slytherin, could be assumed deliberate and therefore, under these circumstances, promising).  

Not to mention from his handwriting.  Filius had only studied graphology for a lark; he didn’t put any credence in it; but now he was starting to wonder if Rosier had studied it in earnest and purposefully developed a hand to match the old-fashioned, impractical, over-bred, slow roll of his voice.

Narcissa Black was another kettle of kneazles entirely.   The only reason Filius was now willing to consider trusting her as far as he could throw her without a wand was that, despite the sweet-and-pretty veneer, she’d never tried to play warm and bubbly, and if she hadn’t let her intelligence gush enthusiastically out of her every facial orifice the way several others in her year had, she’d also never once, to his knowledge, tried to play dumb. He could quite see a class of first-years drawing back in terror at the thought of annoying _her._

“You could always threaten them with their Headmaster and their parents,” Evan pointed out, “although, I repeat, _don’t be ridiculous._ ”  He turned to Filius, and said, “Professor Slughorn knew the answer to that question was a resounding ‘he’ll be better than I ever was’ before we’d graduated.”  

“Now who’s being ridiculous.”

“Still you.”

“ _Evan._ ”

“Nope, still you.”

“Sorry about him,” Severus told Filius, looking humiliated.

“Nonsense,” Evan said firmly, although in this instance Filius rather thought Severus had the right of it.  “When you left us alone this afternoon so I could soften him up, I reminded him of when I noticed him pegging you for his replacement when he retired.”  

Filius raised his eyebrows, skeptical.  He hadn’t heard Horace moan pathetically about getting old in years, and at the height of that exercise in self-pity Severus had not been anyone’s idea of an authority figure.  Filius might have cast him in the role of the falcon-headed Set of the storms, setting forth again and again and unendingly in the boat of Ra to do bleeding battle against the flint-headed Apep, World-Encircler, Eater of Souls, if all aspects of the comparison wouldn’t have offended absolutely everyone involved.  

Not a weak or unworthy figure, if all you were looking for was _indomitable_ (a quality deeply to be desired in a mole) _,_ but he hadn’t exactly shone as a problem-solver or a leader, or as anything but too proud to ask for or accept any help, or do anything else that might have been taken as giving in even a little.  Filius couldn’t see Horace even thinking about replacing himself with that hissing, cornered, half-drowned, half-crazed little black fox, no matter how tired or cranky Horace had been, let alone planning to really do it.  No matter how clever a potioneer Severus had already been.  Even Horace was more responsible than that.

Evan smiled at his doubt, quite sure of himself.  “I may not have used those words exactly, but I promise you he knew exactly what I was talking about.”  He frowned, and admitted, “I’m not sure if he’d agree that he did, though; he’d have to own up to some other things in order to even come close to talking about that, and that would be a touch uncomfortable for him.”

Diverted, Filius had to remind himself that he was only talking to an extremely recently-graduated alumnus to keep from answering that with the remark about Horace’s fortitude that it deserved.

“Narcissa might be better than he is at something someday,” Severus said firmly, after the silence wherein no one commented on Horace’s inability to handle discomfort had stretched a little too far.  “You would be, if you bothered, do not take this as a pointed hint to alter your behavior or I will beat you to death or at least gasping insensibility with a pillow.  I’ll never be anything like him at anything, and he knows it, and that’s not something he cares for in people.”

Recently-graduated-alumni, Filius reminded himself: agreement inappropriate.  

Although he thought ‘cares for’ wasn’t quite it.  Severus did not appear willing to grasp the idea of a mandated social game with clear and navigable rules which Evan had tried to remind him of before.  Filius didn’t, however, get the impression it was the same sort of blind spot that he seemed to be showing about decisive actions that ought to have been assumed available to him.  

This, Filius thought, hiding a rueful smile under his moustache, wasn’t youth and inexperience, as he’d first assumed, or at least not only that.  It was ordinary, stiff-necked, self-blinkering class resentment, and would need to be approached quite differently, without any assistance from Severus’s pureblooded friends.  At least, not the ones he actually liked.

“Regardless,” Evan said serenely, leaning back to sip cider with an arm still around Severus’s neck.

“Let’s go back a bit,” Filius said.  “Whether you could or should do the job, either of them, isn’t ultimately up to me, anyway.”   Thank Athena.  If it turned out that Severus was right about it being the only option, or if it seemed to be the best option and further examination showed half a chance the boy could survive the work, he would have felt obligated to go apologize in person to Ellie Prince.  Her displeasure at being contacted by a wizard when she’d made her position quite clear would only have been the start of his troubles, whether or not she still used a wand.  Albus was welcome to every single headache he’d brought on himself by stirring up this mess.  “You said that freeing you up to be a supplier was _one_ reason.  Are you aware of others, or being modest?”

“He’s being modest,” Evan posited, grinning.

“I hesitate to classify a potential proficiency at playing Pestilence as a matter for modesty, and suspect others,” Severus corrected dourly.  “Suspicion only, but specific others.”

“Well?”

Shrugging, Severus posited, “Let’s operate on the hypothetical that we’re discussing a power which can manipulate governmental committees—political bodies—and has the ability and the will to also manipulate magical creatures and nonhuman sentients.”

“Such as giants,” Filius said neutrally.

“That species would fit that description.  So would werewolves.”

“All right, operating on that hypothetical.  But you’ve already confirmed who has responsibility for the giants, even if it’s not information we can do anything with publicly.  Why are we treating this as a hypothetical?”

“Because we’re guessing _this_ time,” Evan reminded him.  Severus made an insulted noise, and he amended, “Okay, not ‘guessing,’” and rubbed Severus’s wrist comfortingly.  Filius swallowed his smile, and also the line of Doyle that was too obvious to need voicing.

Severus settled his shoulders, like an offended cat letting its fur fall flat.  “What does ending the project do?” he prompted.

Evan coughed.  It sounded, to Filius’s amused ear, rather a lot like the word _professor._  Severus looked indignant, and his fingers flashed in admirably rapid hand-ogham.  Filius read, I-F / I-U-S-T / A-N-S-U-U-E-R / I-O-U / S-A-I / I / L-E-C-T-U-R-E, with clever little swiping motions replacing the usual straightforward tap at the letter-point when an I stood in for a Y or J.  Evan laughed and squeezed his shoulders.

“What does it do in what sphere?” Filius asked tolerantly.

Severus, unusually in Filius’s experience, looked pleased to be pressed for more specificity rather than giving Filius the irritated _what else would I have meant_ look he and his chicks so often got.  “Werewolf-wizard relations, for a start.”

Dryly, he asked, “We have some?”  Courting couples had relations.  Treating and allied nations had relations.  Wizards and goblins had relations, wizards and dwarves did.  Even, in a hands-offish sort of way, wizards and centaurs.  ‘Relations’ implied a certain amount of give and take, some balance on the see-saw, a state of mutual accord, however grudging or suspicious it might be on either side.  Farmers and chickens did not have relations (unless the chickens were even more unlucky than usual), and neither did wizards and trolls, or wizards and werewolves.

The look Severus gave him wasn’t just a flat _don’t you be flippant about this._  It had an eye-flare at the end that made Filius sit up, reminded him of Severus telling him and Albus that there were things he wouldn’t be able to tell them.  Things like names.

It also didn’t escape his attention that Severus had just made him sit up, change his attitude, and pay attention with a look, without moving anything but his eyes.    

He was predisposed to be well-inclined to Severus, of course, and his attitude hadn’t been a belligerent or mutinous one. One instance in a person’s own home, quiet and safe, was not a common room, or a classroom before the lethargy of a meal or its attendant sugar high of pudding had worn off. Then again, Filius was Severus’s elder by many, many years, and he hadn’t actually _decided_ to straighten his spine and close his mouth, he’d just done it.

“I don’t know how many werewolves there are in Britain who’ve managed to avoid being tagged by the Werewolf Registry, but at least some who began as wizards come to St. Mungo’s when they’re bitten, or bring their children, instead of, say, leaving the country, if necessary by swimming the Channel at two AM.  They have also not attempted to commit mass suicide by attacking the Ministry, either at full moon or on any day in the month while armed with machine guns.  Which, believe me, would not be beyond their imaginations, considering that not all of them _were_ born to wizarding homes and not all are divorced from their families or all access to funds.  Yes, we have some.”

“Armed with what?” Evan asked curiously.

Severus hesitated, looking reluctant, but when he answered he didn’t dodge. “If you could use a small reductor curse like a high pressure aguamenti.”  Evan blanched.

For a moment, Filius questioned the wisdom of giving a sheltered pureblood as vivid (and accurate) an image as that.  He found the things frightening and depressing himself, and he’d both handled them and developed enchantments to turn clothes to armor against them.  Nothing he’d seen so far had suggested that Severus would treat Evan in any other way, though, and after the first recoil Evan took it stolidly enough.   

“I strongly suspect Grindelwald failed to take over the Muggle world because it had already passed the point of possibility, not because he was stopped,” Severus told him, almost apologetically.

“I’ve _always_ said it would be too much trouble,” Evan waved that away.  

Filius made a cool note to ask in what context he’d ‘always said’ that, and what he’d considered the alternative should be.  

“It’s too much trouble the moment they get past the point of having walled city-states that don’t expect to talk to each other and realize magic is bigger than their priests can control.  You haven’t told anybody they have weapons like that, Spike.”  

“Neither has a certain personage who’s _demanded all my future communications to him be in cursive,_ Ev,” Severus retorted.  “I can’t tell you what his reasoning is, but _I_ would not scream ‘fire’ in the Great Hall at suppertime unless not only was there one but I was sure it couldn’t be put out.  People get trampled even in happy mobs; you think Quidditch fans are bad, ask me da about Manchester United some time he’s talking to us again.”

“You can write in cursive?” Filius demanded, outraged at the memory of seven years’ good use of magnifying spells over scrolls of cramped quillwork.  Of course, Severus’s cursive might not have been much better, taken all in all, but there were fewer opportunities for pretentious little crabbed hooks on one’s letters when most of the letters were joined up.

“EVERYTHING,” Severus announced, after staring at him in appalled silence for a good five seconds.  “ALL ENCOMPASSING IS THE HATRED AND THE LOATHING.”

“Because you would have preferred to write your essays like that or because of the tangent?” Evan asked him soothingly.

“I couldn’t have written _anything_ using a muggle handwriting style at school,” Severus said grumpily. “I had enough trouble keeping Mulciber and his ilk on the ‘reasonably-friendly to at-least-off-my-back’ spectrum as it was.”

“That means ‘both,’” Evan told Filius, most of his private little smile angled away.  “He does go faster like that, even if I’m not entirely convinced it’s really English.”

“Everybody goes faster like that, once they get used to it; going faster is the point,” Filius explained.  “All right.  Yes, we have some sort of rudimentary relationship with werewolves.  What do you think ending your project would do to it?”

“What the project’s _existence_ has done to it is prove that there are, at least, a faction of wizards that remember on a day-to-day basis that they exist, and that the Ministry is willing to extend resources in their direction in a nonviolent way,” Severus said flatly.

“That’s… rather basic.”

“Those are the only things it actually proves,” Severus shrugged.  “It _suggests_ that some of us might think of them as sick or cursed people rather than a plague on our society.  It _suggests_ that some of us want to help them, or at least would rather work on a cure than undergo the practical and public-relations nightmare of a committed werewolf hunt.”

“No one would brook anything that smacked of a witch hunt,” Filius protested.

Severus dumped another disenchanted, quelling look on him, and snarled, “Bet me your wand.  Go on.   _First they came for the Socialists.”_

Filius flinched, and started, “That’s hardly—”

“What?” asked Evan, looking back and forth between them in confusion.

“That’s _exactly,”_ Severus said, hard-voiced.  “It doesn’t matter who.  Nazis, Inquisition, Colonial witch-hunters, Crusaders.  Let it be knights, Round Table or Walpurgis.  Let it be aurors.  Royally-backed Protestants, royally-backed Catholics.  Normans.   _Doesn’t matter._ When one group is in charge and armed and in agreement, whoever they say is out is bloody well out, and no one, not even one of their own, is going to lift a voice or finger in dissent.  In case they’re fingered next.”  

He smiled nastily, bitterly, showing crooked teeth, and crooned, “First they came for the smug and secret criminals, but I was above reproach.  Then they came for the tax evaders, but my accountant was better than their bloodhounds.  Then they came for the hidden criminals, but my record was clean.  Then they came for the scandalous, but my life had been terribly dull.  Then they came for those who’d said offensive shite in public, but I have ever been measured of speech.  Then they came for those who’d been caught in factual errors, but I had learned to speak only from carefully-researched notes.  Then they came for the dress-code deviants and those who forgot to empty their pockets of office supplies of an evening, but by then I had learned the discipline of terror.  And then they came for those who seemed so squeaky-clean they were obviously hiding something, and by then so many careers had been scuttled that the market was glutted and there weren’t any job openings left on which to hang the hope of a new life and everyone was too terrified to hire a Shamed One anyway.”

“ _Argumentum ad absurdum,_ ” Filius accused.

“Thirty-four year wager?” Severus challenged, offering his hand with the most cynical expression Filius ever wanted to see on someone his age.  “1984 was written around 1950[2] or so, I believe; use that length of time as the standard for predictions?  Moot if interrupted by civil or world war?”

“ _Anything_ could happen in that length of time!”

“If it’s less absurd under unforeseen circumstances, then it is _not_ extrapolated to absurdity, it’s merely a horrific possibility you _hope_ won’t be nurtured by circumstances that would encourage it along.”

Plaintively, Evan told him, “Just because you’re gambling on something what I have no ruddy idea what you’re talking about doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to win a bet, Spike.”

Severus smirked, rather widely for him, and pointed out, “Ah, but it’s not a bet with _you._ ”

“And I can’t tell you which side to take if no one explains it to me,” Evan said, in the triumphant manner of someone laying down a winning hand at cards.

“I take the side which I think most likely to win, but on which, in losing, I win more,” Severus told him sedately, with a sly slide of eyes that made Evan suck in an indignant and thoroughly captivated drop-jawed breath which Filius _did not want to know anything about._

“Your friend,” Filius answered the original question, looking reproachfully at Severus, “has, in adopting the common sense of your House, forgotten that the world mostly relies on people being more passionate, by which I mean driven by love or anger, than sensible.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Severus retorted, “but I shan’t rely on it when the world mostly _runs_ on people being more _afraid and greedy_ than any of those things.”

Evan looked between them, this time with a sort of sighing resignation, and said, “Spike, had you finished explaining about the lab grant?”

Looking a bit wrongfooted, Severus slowly answered, “...No..?”

“Well, you know I’m always happy to listen to you go on, and I’m delighted you’re getting _something_ useful out of everlastingly chinwagging about those be-toga-ed blighters with Lucius, personally I would have told him by now he’s dead boring and how about those Borgias, but if we’re going to be here all afternoon, I think I’ll make some tea.”

Severus’s eyes flew open as if this were an outrageous threat, quite blow the belt, and, glaring in indignant defeat, said very quickly indeed,  “Cutting the funding suggests, as I was saying—”

“Half an hour ago,” Evan murmured, smiling, into his cider.  

Severus shot him a dirty look.  “ _Suggests_ that even if all we end up with is a functioning palliative that leaves werewolves harmless or sane while transformed, the public could be brought to see that under those circumstances lycanthropy could be treated like any other transformative curse.  Then any harm done by transformed wolves could be treated normally by the DMLE, as purposeful crimes or a criminal neglect of mandated medication.  In which case werewolves would be, functionally, ordinary wizards or cursed-muggles until the disease aged out of the population and vanished.  All that assumes everyone acts and feels _sensibly_ , though.”

“But how careful are the people who come to your clinic about just believing what’s only proven, Spike?” Evan asked softly.

“Not bad, in fact,” Severus told him sardonically.  “Their lives have, largely speaking, not cultivated optimism.  But those who come and aren’t incurable optimists, they come because they see the possibilities and they think even the chance is worth putting themselves through the side effects and the treatment they get on the way.  Not, in most cases, because they think it’s much of a chance, but because it gives them purpose, because they prefer to grind themselves up in the machinery of a hopeless chance that was at least aimed in the right direction than to do nothing for their own.”

“…Fair enough.”

“Fair has nothing to do with it, but as the most contemptible do-nothing moral coward I know keeps trying to throw himself into the grinders like a lemming living next to a glumbumble nest no matter how many times I boot him out of the office, the impulse must be overwhelming.”

“That’s… nice of you?” Filius commented, raising an eyebrow, utterly unable to decide whether to put any sarcasm in his tone or not. If Severus did mean Lupin, he might really be doing him a favor, and yet.

“It’s not _my_ fault he fails the screening critera,” Severus complained, and waved a dismissive hand. “Still, take away even just what’s _proven_ and I know how I’d react.”

“Now, hover your broom,” Evan told him, frowning.  “Don’t choke on your cider, but you’re not giving the Ministry enough credit.”

“…Let me see that bottle,” Severus demanded suspiciously, turning to Filius.  

* * *

[1] Filius doubted he himself had been spared during other teachers’ classes, but you could at least say about Rosier that he was always polite.

[2] It was 1949, so Filius is getting a one-year handicap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : Evan declines to be politically correct, Severus refuses to admit he's ever even a little bit liked even one unit of children ever, Filius does not buy art, Fawkes is grumpy and exploited, and James needs a Male-to-English interpreter (but talks to Severus instead).


	7. Still more Dye-Urn, last bit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan declines to be politically correct, Severus refuses to admit he's ever even a little bit liked even one unit of children ever, Filius does not buy art, Fawkes is grumpy and exploited, and James needs a Male-to-English interpreter (but talks to Severus instead).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Temporary Notes** Off schedule, I know. Things are still a bit topsy-turvy. It's not so much the job (or even the two jobs) as the commute... The best that I can tell you right now is that Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays are the best bets, but which day it will be on any given week is somewhat dependent on the behavior of people who are not me. I probably like this less than you do, if it's any help...

“No, I mean it,” Evan insisted as Filius chuckled.  “Spike, the whole reason they started talking about cutting the grant in the first place is because a lot of people think you’ve gotten it to a place that’s _good enough._  That’s how they’re going to play it.  I know you feel it’s not ready—”

“Because it’s not.”

“Yes, I know, but they’re not going to say, ‘This project isn’t getting anywhere or worth funding so we’re shutting it down.’ They’ll call it a success.  A triumph.  They’ll call it a miracle that all-right-small-print-might-have-a-few-kinks-still But They Cannot In Conscience Keep It One Moment Longer From Our Poor Afflicted Werewolf Population And Their Long-Suffering Families.”

Severus stared at him in horror.  He tried, “But if we explained—we could go to the Proph…er.”

“No, you probably could get an article in,” Evan agreed judiciously.  “You were winding up to say something about how Certain Parties want to disimprove what wizard-werewolf relations there are, I could tell. If you’re right, then _those_ levers on the paper wouldn’t get in your way.  Might even clear away the Ministry brambles.  But what would you say?  You’d say, yes it works as advertised but there are horrible side effects.  And the Ministry would respond with, “Aren’t our researchers conscientious, bless their hearts, they’re exaggerating of course but we have such scrupulous and caring researchers at St. Mungos, give us money to fund these fine young witches and wizards, they’re completely overstating the dangers but we must expect such silly exactitude from Ravenclaws ha-ha.’”

“ _I’m not Ravenclaw!!!!”_

“You don’t have to howl about it, Severus,” chided Filius, smiling a little.  He might have mustered up a scrap of offense from somewhere, but, “I have it on good authority that you wouldn’t have minded.”

“No, of course not, but I’m _not_ one.”

“So,” Filius concluded, rubbing his moustache to hide his mouth, “it’s the expected mistreatment of the facts that you find particularly outrageous.”

“Exactly.”

“Everyone else in your lab is Ravenclaw,” Evan waved a dismissive hand, less diverted, “you’ve probably been contaminated.  Besides, any reporter worth their pay could dig up at least twelve schoolmates of ours and eight of your teachers who’d be thrilled to complain at length about what a meticulous little swot you’ve been since you first stepped off the train, no contamination actually required, and it wouldn’t take too much digging to find Cleo or coax a few words out of Reg, either.”

“Eight?” Filius asked, amused, while Severus crossed his arms and glared.

“You never looked as much like he was giving you a headache,” Evan explained, “and there was a lot of trial-and-error involved in working out how to approach Transfigurations, so I didn’t think the Tar—er, Professor Mc, er.”

“ _McGonagall,”_ Severus snapped.

“You can’t expect me to remember a name I can’t pronounce, Spike.”

“Mín eaxlgestealla, heo beon na arwierþe weorþlic.   你比这更好的.  Ορκίζομαι στο Θεό ότι είστε καλύτεροι από αυτό.  In hoc autem casu non postulat placet temptemini et peribunt.”[1]

Filius hoped so, although he wouldn’t have minded a _little_ testing, especially if ‘shield-brother’ was a good indicator of how deeply his agent meant to rely on the thoughtless princeling.  

“It just sounds like gargling to me,” said Evan airily.    

Severus put his head down on his arms on the table.  “Ev.  No.”  This was not as vehement a defense as Minerva deserved after a remark that offensive, but, Filius supposed, it might well be the sort most likely to be accepted by a young pureblood who hadn’t, as far as Filius could remember, gotten any real scoldings even at school.

Evan shrugged easily.  “Anyway, I wasn’t sure she’d agree about meticulous.”

“I’m not sure Horace would, either, as a matter of fact,” Filius noted, leaving correcting Evan’s attitude to the one who was suffering the appropriate contact humiliation from it.  “I gather there was a year or two of not entirely admirable experimental procedure?”

“Oh, of _course_ he’d blame that on me,” Severus scowled, jerking bolt upright without uncrossing his arms.  “All right, yes, we were a bit slipshod, but _Lily_ was the impatient one, I just, er, didn’t want to say no to her in too many areas at once.”

Evan’s face turned to ice, although his smile was extremely pleasant.

Not having been looking at him, Severus continued on, obliviously but a bit sheepishly.  At least, Filius thought he was oblivious.  These were Slytherins.  It might have been revenge.   “Although I have to admit that the sheer rate at which she had interesting ideas may have been a factor in wearing down my resistance.”

This did not improve Evan’s expression.

“Who’s Cleo?” Filius asked, not too hastily, he hoped.

“Perry, really,” Evan corrected himself, giving Severus what Filius would have described as a mildly reproachful look on anyone else, but coming from him was probably a full-blown stink-eye.  “Peregrine Blakeney.  She’d be in… just finishing fifth year now, I suppose.”

“Oh, Miss Blakeney!  Yes, of course, she’s one of your House’s prefects.”

“That’s right,” Severus confirmed.  Evan blinked at him.  “You don’t imagine Slughorn’s gossip with me is about _socialites,_ ” he drawled, and asked Filius, “Is she any good?”

“Not one of the most effective you’ve ever had at cat-herding so far, I have to say, but she’s very bright and rather sweet.  Wants to go into healing, she tells me.”

The boys glanced at each other and grinned.  Or at least Evan grinned, and Severus’s face warmed.  “How incredibly surprising,” he said drolly, and brushed Evan’s cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers.

“Why do you call her Cleo?”

“Just a nickname.  She was rather attached to Spike, as in: by his ankle.”

“ _Shut up._ ”

“It’s your own fault for not kicking her.”

“There were,” Severus’s hands spasmed once, helplessly, “ _eyes!_  She had a pet mouse.  I wasn’t well! _”_

Evan grinned at him, and then turned the grin back on Filius.  “And if you think she’s sweet, just suggest to her that anything bad ever happened to a Slytherin while he was at school that did not involve him personally yelling at them for being noisy, being stupid, or failing to correct bad grammar he’d already told them how to fix.  Then run.”

“Not using my suggestions when they were paying me to correct their drafts _was_ being stupid,” Severus grumbled.

“So she’d confirm—to the Prophet—that he can be overprotective,” Filius asked carefully.  He was going have to have a good long chat with the Slytherin Common Room’s portraits, preferably before Horace sobered up, got his act together (not necessarily in that order), and talked to Albus.   Evan Rosier was clearly about the worst source of unbiased information about Severus that Filius could have found outside of Gryffindor.   The paperwork and the dressing gown weren’t _necessarily_ indicative, but Filius should probably have worked it out from the tell-me-tell-me-tell-me look.

“The details don’t really matter anyway,” Evan said with another dismissive hand-gesture.  “I could be anticipating the wrong spin.  My point is that they have people who do this for a living.”  Hastily, he added, “And are good at it.”

Severus closed his mouth, disgruntled.  Then he opened it again.

“I _know, Spike,_ ” Evan droned, looking at Severus with affectionate eyes that didn’t match his tone very well, “because of how many people get into jobs they aren’t good at, and stay there.”

“But cronyism and—”

“Those things have to be _excused,_ Spike.  We do pretend the Ministry feels accountable to the public, you know.  Keeps them reassured and uninterested.”

“It’s not very long at all till 1984,” Severus growled in utter disgust at Filius, who toppled over laughing in his chair a bit.  

“We’re not that bad,” he protested, recovering himself.

“I demand pitchforks.  And _my_ point was, so will they, no matter what the public relations campaign says.  They’ll know the research was cut off before the formula got to a point where taking the potion wasn’t guaranteed to ruin their lives.  And they’ll notice bloody fast that producing the potion is unfeasibly expensive and the Ministry will, at best, partially subsidize it on an ongoing basis.”

Evan’s head jerked to him in an amazed look—genuine, as far as Filius could tell.

“I said ‘at best,’” Severus added crossly.

“Ah, right,” said Evan, sounding reassured, possibly about his sanity.

“What would you expect, given that production at any volume is unfeasibly expensive?” Severus asked him, sounding rather as if he’d just lost a fight with himself about whether he was going to ask a question whose answer he didn’t want.

“Provide it free for just long enough for the public to lose interest,” Evan said after thinking about it for scarcely four seconds,  “then say, ‘everyone’s had a long enough grace period to get on their feet and find work by now.’”

“Meaning those who can’t afford what would be utterly unaffordable on a monthly basis even by the moderately successful are layabouts.  Assuming anyone bothers to ask.” Severus finished for him dourly, and turned back to Filius.  “Belby always planned and promised to make the final recipe non-proprietary, so they’ll be able to claim that a werewolf will be able to hire any potioneeer to brew it for them.  Only, very few will be able to.  It’s not exactly a boil cure.”

“You’re saying they’ll feel hard-done by.”

“I’m not saying all of them will notice it immediately,” Severus cautioned, lifting his hands without raising his wrists in a stiff don’t-get-ahead-of-me gesture.  “But I am convinced that the overall feeling will, over time, come to be, ‘So, you were just toying with us when you pretended for half a moment there that we had a chance at being even second-class citizens, you utter smug, game-playing, wand-hoarding bastards, comfortable in your beds, think you’re invincible and can do what you like.’”

He let that hang for a moment, his eyes gone particularly obsidian-like, glinting hard and sharp and without a trace of good humor. “And then our _absolutely best chance_ is that it doesn’t occur to even one of them that they’re not the only population carrying that particular resentment.  Except—oh, wait!” He leaned back, snapping his fingers high in the air with a look of gentle, astonished revelation, snideness dripping from his voice and every pore.  “Blow me down if at least one of them hasn’t sat through the same interminable lessons on the Goblin and Giant Wars that I have.”

“No one had to tell me,” Evan mentioned placidly when Filius shot Severus a warning look for connecting Remus Lupin’s curse with Hogwarts in front of him, named or not.  “I worked it out when the gentleman in question dragged me to Spike’s lab as if I weighed as much as a daffodil after I’d mentioned I’d heard someone from the grant committee was popping by.  Couldn’t think of any other particular reason he’d have to know where it was, let alone care about the funding, and my stars but he cared.”

“Of course it’s quite possible that even under those conditions Goody Angst-rag No-Spine wouldn’t mention the possibility of an alliance to his fellows,” conceded Severus, lip curling for just a second before his face smoothed into cool analysis again.  “He lives as a wizard and as far as I’m aware he thinks of himself as a wizard first, if not as a member of his House and a friend of his friends first.”

“That one,” Evan said, definite about it.  “Friend of his friends, then werewolf, then wizard.”  

Severus slid a little curling piece of smile at him—which, Filius noted, wasn’t an agreement—and then went on seriously.  “It’s even possible that werewolves who were bitten after Hogwarts and the witches and wizards who keep faith with their afflicted relatives wouldn’t remember those lessons or think of them.  I think what most people remember from History class is napping in the warm under a droning blanket of white noise.  And the Gringotts goblins may not go out of their way to be pleasant, or helpful beyond their mandate,” he added approvingly, “but they’re unfailingly professional.”

“Do you like goblins?” Filius blinked.  He was, while not unpleasantly, unnerved by the prospect.  Even wizards who worked at the bank and had goblin friends didn’t talk about goblins-generally in that tone of voice.

“I don’t like anybody,” replied Severus, as definite as Evan had been about Remus, “but I think—stop laughing at me, you, or I’ll bite you—I think it’s laudable that they loathe our smallest molecules and have our economy entirely in our power and haven’t destroyed it even though it’s bloody obvious wands don’t give us _that_ much of an advantage over them.”

“I think the bank likes that we have to come to it as suppliants for our own gold,” Filius admitted, feeling he had to meet that with equal honesty, even if it made him also feel a bit of a traitor.

“Even if we don’t see it that way,” remarked Evan thoughtfully.

“Especially if you don’t see it that way, I expect,” Severus said dryly.  “The butler doesn’t spit in his master’s port because he thinks the man will _find out,_ that would be quite counterproductive.”  Evan looked at him in alarm.  “Don’t be ridiculous, Linkin dotes on you.  Besides, he doesn’t have to humiliate you behind your back to relieve his feelings when you annoy him, he hits you with a spoon and calls you ‘Master Evvie’ right to your face.”

“That’s true,” Evan agreed, cheering up.  Even more cheerfully, he added, “So do you.”

“I am _not_ your butler.  Or your valet, or your housekeeper, and cooking _for us_ does not make me _your cook._ ”  He disentangled himself.  “And on that note.”

“Are you _actually_ abandoning a guest for the cauldron?” Evan asked, pained, amused, and alarmed as Severus stood.  Filius wondered for a moment whether that was a long-standing threat.  Since Severus didn’t make a face, he decided instead that it probably had something to do with Horace’s rather forlorn and otherwise inexplicable comment about how when you _know_ you have a glaring fault that everyone looks down on you for, the done thing is to fix it, not use it as bait.

“No, I’m going for take-away.”

“But we’ve still got scones,” Evan blinked.

“First off, I want _food,_ ” Severus said.  “More importantly, we don’t know whether Potter’s pried himself away from his celebration of his own virility to start stalking me again, or, that matter, whether anyone else has eyes on the street.  In either of those cases, I prefer it to look as though Professor Flitwick came to visit _you_ not two hours after Slughorn dropped by, and that my presence was superfluous to your chat if not actually a hindrance.”

Evan looked at Filius blankly, and looked back at Severus.  “What are we chatting about?”

“Don’t ask me what _you two_ might have to talk about together!” Severus scoffed incredulously with an emphasis Filius didn’t quite understand, shrugged himself into what was presumably a cooling summer overrobe even if it didn’t look like one, and left.

“It’s a pity that most of his compliments boil down to to ‘you’re on your own,’” Evan observed sadly.  “Then again, one hears them so seldom.”

“Do you?” Filius asked curiously.

“Oh, we Sorted together, what sort of Slytherin would I be if I couldn’t catch his meaning most of the time,” Evan smiled sleepily, giving him limpid eyes from under drooping lashes.

“Do you really think there’s much point putting that don’t-care-need-a-nap face on at this point?” Filius asked curiously.

Evan sat up a little, his blueish eyes peeling wider.  “But—I, no, what?”

Filius cocked his head.  “I did sit through quite a lot of classes with you, you know, being surprised you were keeping up when I half-expected you to start drooling on your desk any moment.”

Evan drew himself up further, with dignity.  “I meant, sir, that I wasn’t insulting your intelligence by switching to public-face.  You asked for information so personal it was difficult to reply to the question at all without being rude.”  Then he relaxed and laughed, a little sheepishly.  “Sorry.  I haven’t had to explain anything that brutally since, oh, probably fourth year.”

“Most people wouldn’t think that whether your friend compliments you occasionally is a very personal question,” Filius pointed out, bemused. Evan seemed to think the other had been a snide question, or something in that category, but he’d just wanted to know.  Evan had started relaxing into his usual faraway, languishing attitude very nearly the second the door had closed behind Severus, and by the time he’d started answering Filius’s question he’d been an inch away from the disengaged boy Filius had so often wanted to shake in class.  

It was _thoroughly unlikely_ that the Evan Rosier Filius had just met and that Severus Snape seemed to know, expect, and rely on should honestly think that Filius, half a minute after speaking with that Evan Rosier, would believe in the slug-a-chair again just because Severus wasn’t there.  An absurd notion, and the boy might have Black blood but that was not the sort of ‘madness’ that ran through the line.  That was just a disinclination to train their children in anger-management, so as to preserve the family’s reputation for being an unwise one to cross.

Eliminating the possibilities of Evan being stupid or crazy enough to think he could fool Filius into believing a lie he himself had only just disproven, what remained?  Unknown, but he thought that moment of confusion had been real. In which case the relapse into ‘public-face,’ as Evan had called it, might not have been so deliberate as he’d very-nearly implied.  What had triggered it?  Severus leaving, or some component of being left alone with Filius who was, to him, only an old professor.  What had ended it?  Surprise, or some component of being faced or confronted with a truth about himself or his behavior in the manner in which Filius had done so.

Ordinarily he’d take a pensieve memory to Albus when he needed help on the fine points of analyzing an interaction like this, but Evan wasn’t a target and nothing imminently depended on Filius understanding this, so it would be a betrayal of privacy. Besides, if Filius was made uneasy by the shadows of captive tyrants in Rosier’s face than Albus would be completely thrown off by then.  Severus might have insights, if there was time.

Evan, who was looking at him as if he’d turned into a niffler, shrugged a little.  He did not, however, relapse again, which Filius considered to be a significant data point, although its significance was as yet unclear. “So what are you here for?  Portrait commission?  If it’s for Dumbledore’s birthday, I assume you’re persuading me to get Grandpère to do it; I’m far too green for anyone to believe a client of his stature would seek me out, or that friends who didn’t want to belittle him publicly him would do it with his portrait in mind.”

Filius considered.  “Horace mentioned that you’ll be doing an exhibit of pictures you painted during a recent Quidditch tournament?”

“It was just an amateur do,” Evan said, “and of course they’re not living portraits.”  Filius got the impression he wouldn’t have shown them to his grandfather with a wand at his throat, but quite a bit of that modesty was false as an obedient Peeves.

“Albus would enjoy a painting of a Gryffindor or Puddlemere United game far more than one of himself.  I’m just looking into the idea today, you understand.”

“Quite.  The canvases are in my vault at Rose & Yew, but shall I find the photos, as a start?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions, as a matter of fact, if you don’t mind.”  He smiled.  “I hope they won’t be so personal you’ll have to dodge so as not to be rude.”

Evan gave him a _this is not how things are done_ look.  Filius had seen one very like it thousands of times before, only Horace’s version had descended into tooth-gritting irritation lately. Evan’s was all sad reproach, very mild on a long sigh.  “All right.”

“What are you doing?”

“…Humoring you?  Am I doing it wrong?  I have a lot of experience,” Evan assured him, just a touch too earnestly, “but I suppose there must be individual variation to take into account.”

“I’m not asking so you can humor me, though,” Filius told him, good-natured about it.  “I want to be sure you have, in fact, agreed to what your friend signed you up for.”  He was a great deal readier to believe it than he had been when he came in, but it wasn’t something he could take as an assumption.  He could take Albus’s word that Narcissa had, however circuitously, made her position clear, but he couldn’t simply let it stand that one person had volunteered another without _some_ sort of clear indication of consent.

“You’re not going to throw things at me, too, are you?” Evan asked gloomily.  He answered Filius’s what-on-earth face, “After Severus came back from his last talk with you, he threw things at me and screamed for nearly half an hour before he’d believe I wasn’t mad at him.  At least, it felt like half an hour.”

“And you weren’t angry with him after _that_?” Filius asked, raising an eyebrow.

Evan gave him the you-have-turned-into-a-niffler look again.  “I’m not going to get mad at him for being afraid of things that are extremely dangerous.  I suppose there’s a place for friends and allies that aren’t at least that intelligent, but I think I’d find one rather a trial, wouldn’t you? It would take so much looking-after…”

He made a vaguely horrified, hollow-eyed face, like one who’d been forced to watch the last few years of the heat-death of the universe without looking away (or, more likely, forced to have tea with Lucius Malfoy and his bookends), and then smiled warmly. “Besides, he’s not a bad Chaser at all, and he didn't hit me with anything once and I only had to duck three or four times and they were ugly teacups anyway.”

Filius stared at him.

“Extremely ugly,” he was assured.  “I think they’d been,” Evan’s nose wrinkled, “ _mass-produced._ ”

“...Oh, well, in that case.”   _Quidditch players._ “But you realize that anyone would consider that you’d have had a perfect right to be angry,” Filius hoped.  If he still half-meant angry about the teacup-hurling, he reminded himself that a right was not always an obligation.  

He was, however, going to have to press the Slytherin portraits closely on the question of whether Severus ever allowed himself to lose control of his temper like that with anyone who wasn’t bigger, or at least older and more powerful, than he was.  For a child to throw a tantrum at his teachers was regrettable, but understandable when it was a breakdown in helplessness and not a manipulation.  

For two young men to have their arguments physically was almost (almost) a good idea, if they both saw it in the same way. If they felt well-matched, and neither was afraid of the other. Once one remembered that they were both dangerously well-armed magically, at least one had a vicious tongue and the instincts of a clawed prey animal, the other was from two lines well steeped in the Dark Arts, they’d played well together on the same team in a violent sport where half the game was cheating, and that cuts and bruises were far easier to heal than hexes or potion damage, let alone curses.

For an adult to show violence to his wards would be quite another matter.  Even Filch only said if-only-I-could as an intimidation tactic, which was repugnant enough but at least kept him from being accused of having pets or getting sucked into any student political games.  An unfortunate tactic, but perhaps a wise one for a squib who was only staff and not faculty, and must feel powerless.  But Severus wouldn’t be powerless if he were to be brought in, and if this was what he turned to as his go-to means of releasing his feelings, the whole thing was impossible.

“Tell me you understand what we’re talking about,” he pressed, setting school-related concerns aside for later.  “Tell me clearly, please.”

Evan sighed.  “For a House that’s meant to be clever,” he muttered into his palms.  Looking up again, “Helping Severus practice his mind-magic now you lot are starting to experiment.  And no, I’m not _looking forward_ to it, but he does what he wants and I’m not going to just let him twist in the wind, am I?  Half a tick, I’m just going to take the tray in so Severus can put the food down when he gets back.  Do keep your glass,” he added, giving Filius the sort of look that meant _if you’re slow enough to ignore that hint, I cannot help you._

Filius therefore kept looking at his cider.  A moment after he heard Evan put the tray down in the kitchen, the reflections from the window and the room’s sconces gathered themselves into the lettersICW. And Filius didn’t know anything else that _could_ have stood for but International Confederation of Wizards.

The letters held for a moment, and then shimmered back into natural reflections as Evan came back.  The kitchen, it occurred to Filius, was far enough from the sitting room that both rooms wouldn’t show up at once in a pensieve memory, let alone one being seen by legilimency.

“I’ll give you a hand next time, if you like,” Filius said.  “As I was saying, anyone would consider you have a perfect right to be angry, being volunteered for mind-magic practice.  It can be unpleasant stuff even when it’s not dangerous.”  After that ‘meant to be clever’ comment he refrained from anything like emphasis or indicatory pauses.  He was afraid Evan would start thudding his head on the coffee-table and then Severus would come back and see the bruises and be cross.

He caught just a flicker of relief over Evan’s face, and rather had the impression he was being allowed to see it.  “Well,” Evan explained, “it’s hardly the first time Severus and I had talked about it.  He’s done so much reading, history and DADA, you know what he was like with the restricted section…”

Filius sighed.  “His parents should count themselves lucky he behaved more honestly about his homework.  He doesn’t hold the record for the most stolen, swapped, and forged passes, but it’s close.”

“He’ll be devastated,” declared Evan cheerfully.  “Who’s tops?”

“Basil Fronsac.”

“That sounds familiar...”

“Headmaster after Phineas Black. At the time, of course,” he added, smiling but trying not to be smug about it, “he was only an OWL-year Ravenclaw. Done reading, you were saying?”

“Well, it’s a kind of dark magic, isn’t it?  Even if it’s not the criminal and nasty kind, it’s not structured, not controlled by anything but the wizard’s will and mastery of their own magic.  It can be dangerous for the wizard who’s doing it, especially over a long time.  And it seems that Severus sort of does it automatically a little bit.”  He met Filius’s eyes.  “Can’t just stop breathing the air you’re in and all that.”

“A person can go breathe different air,” Filius mentioned.  Maybe Evan knew why Severus felt stuck in England.

“They’d be bringing the same lungs with them, buildup of all the fumes they’d breathed before.”  Evan shrugged.  “Run away from yourself and there you are, style of thing.”  

“Do you think so?” he asked unhappily.  If one person couldn’t turn away, once caught up, what were the odds that anyone else could?

“Oh count on it, Professor.  Basic biology and all that.” His voice went light and careless and, despite his earlier insistence that he wasn’t trying to insult Filius, started sounding as if he were chewing on something and needed a nap again.  “Happily, that sort of dark magic doesn’t have the sort of thing attached to the other sort, where the rotters who started using it out of interest stopped doing anything else to speak of, whether or not they had Houses and families and business concerns to look after and so on.  Seems to be _awfully_ absorbing, wouldn’t you say?  Not to mention hard on the body as often as not.”

“You know, I don’t think I’d thought about it from that standpoint!” exclaimed Filius, excited.  “You may be right! A genuine change in the brain, do you think? Everyone says that the Dark Arts are seductive, of course, but what if they also _render everything else anhedonic?_  Or make it impossible to believe in the sense of solutions that exclude them? It’s in the oldest stories, of course—the Three Brothers break away from each other as soon as they have their meeting with death, and when the second brother began to dabble in necromancy he abandoned all other concerns but his ghostly bride until his obsession led him to abandon life itself.  And once Herpo the Foul began experimenting with basilisks he left running his estate to his wife, which was probably the most sensible thing he ever did but _quite_ the scandal in Athens. And of course there was that _utter nonsense_ where Raczidian of Albania tried to use _Dementors_ to win himself a sweetheart.  Can you imagine!”

“Well,” Evan drawled, “as Spike says, when all you’ve got is a hammer.  Or a ten-foot tall decomposing ghoul, I suppose, although I must say that I’d rather have even the most uselessly mundane of hammers, myself, even if it is letting the side down: at least you can melt ‘em down for sculpture.Not very Slytherin, though, doing the same sort of thing all the time no matter what the problem is.”

“As far as I can tell,” Filius noted, to keep it light, not mentioning that Evan appeared to have something of a one-track mind himself, going by that sculpture crack, “the Slytherin solution to every problem is to have a dinner party.”

Evan grinned.  “Be fair now, Professor.  Sometimes he has Christmas parties, too, you must admit that.”

“That I will admit,” he conceded, smiling.

“As I was saying, I feel very lucky that with Severus his problem is something that _can_ be practiced, and that getting it mastered will really solve the difficulty.”  His voice stayed light and yawning, but his eyes tightened.  “If it had been the other sort, well.  That’s not the sort of thing one wants happening to friends and family, is it?  And it does tend to spread, doesn’t it, speaking historically, according to Severus.  Not a bludger you want up in the air and multiplying; quite hard to catch even with a team armed with nets, let alone by oneself.  Best not to let it out of the ball-case in the first place, if one can avoid it, saves no end of trouble.”

On the one hand, Filius was glad Evan had, like Narcissa Black—er, Malfoy, found a way to make his position known, however murkily he felt he needed to go about it.  On the other hand, he found it drearily ironic that it was only in relation to his work at Hogwarts that he was largely able to avoid being spoken to in Quidditch metaphors.

“I’m awfully glad it’s just mind-magic he’s caught a case of.  Be a perfect ass, not helping with something as _simple_ as that,” he added, looking depressed and, if not appropriately overwhelmed, at least serious enough to satisfy Filius he was going in with open eyes as much as anyone ever did.  “I mean, he stopped charging me for help with my potions homework all the way back in third year, so even _he_ thinks we’re friends.”  He paused, and pressed his lips together worriedly.  His eyes were not in on it, although they had nothing on the Albus Twinkle.  “Almost certainly.  I’m quite sure.  Really quite sure.  Even if I did still have to buy his history notes like everyone else.”

“That,” said Severus from the doorway, behind Filius, “is because there is a qualitative difference between struggling in a subject and not even trying not to sleep through class. Only one of the two deserves to be punished.”

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Filius noted, annoyed with himself but actually very pleased about it.  He wondered whether the door made a noise that the flat’s residents could hear, and whether it had been enchanted to muffle entries by those residents or Severus was just able to walk that quietly in boots.  Even under these circumstances, of course, it would be impolite to ask on a first visit.

“I was just in time to hear Ev call himself a perfect ass,” Severus said jauntily.  “Quite made my week.”

Evan asked, “Was he…?”

“ _Oh,_ yes,” answered Severus, full of dark humor, and floated a basket of fried things onto the table while he put his cloak back on the stand.

“I thought you said you wanted food,” Filius pointed out, poking something that might have started life as a defenseless little onion that had probably never so much as made anyone cry.

“You’re not obliged to partake,” Severus retorted, turning the basket as he sat down so most of the chips were nearer to Evan.  Relenting, he added, “I can bring the scones back if you’re still hungry, if you don’t want any of this lot.  Assuming they’re not gone because they’re gone.  And there’s a fruit bowl in the kitchen.”

“Shall I look at the canvases while you’re eating?” Filius asked Evan.  He was curious to see what the lad’s art was like when he wasn’t working to the strict and sacred standards of representational portraiture or making bland sitting-room work.  If it was anything like his handwriting, there would be rainbows, unicorns, and the tattered, wide-eyed, winged creatures that muggles thought were pixies, perhaps done in paint with glitter.  Or else a fascination with muscular serpents, possibly in the process of swallowing large animals, and striking sunset landscapes featuring haystacks or gritty, jutting, rocky protrusions.  Somehow, Filius wasn’t expecting he’d be looking at anything remotely like any of that, although either sort would give Albus a laugh.

“Just before you leave, so they’re fresh in your mind.  So if you have all you want, yes.”

“The scones were more than enough, thank you,” said Filius to Severus, making no move to leave their armchair.

Evan sighed, looking a little disappointed.  “Well we can be freer again now,” he told Filius, who would rather have liked to know what difference Severus walking in with a basket of greasy alleged-food made.  Instead of obliging Filius’s Very Obvious Confused And Inquisitive Face, he asked Severus, “He’s really still stalking you?” The disappointment strengthened and took on folds of indignation.  “ _Now?”_

Severus waggled a hand: so-so.  “He claims to have charmed the floors at our usual places to recognize my bootprints and alert him when—”

“That spell should not be floating around!” Filius blurted out, appalled.  They looked at him.  “Distance alert enchantments?  That’s one of ours; civilians are not supposed to know about it.  Can you imagine the trouble it could cause?”

“I’m going to have to visit every place I’ve ever been in the last two years and buy new boots whilst on the verge of unemployment because of the trouble it could cause,” Severus said dryly.  “I regret to tell you that first, Potter is revoltingly good at getting his hands on spells he shouldn’t know about, usually to my personal chagrin, and second, I doubt it’s your spell at all.  Far more likely to be one of Black’s design that merely replicates its function.  Or Lily’s or both, if Potter gave her a good enough reason for wanting something like that.”

“But he _talked_ to you?” Evan gaped with a fine disregard for international security.   _Boys._

“That was, apparently,” Severus inclined his head in bemusement, “the point.  He said there wasn’t anything ‘weird’ about running into each other at a Diagon chippy.  As he was attempting not to be belligerent, I refrained from pointing out that his wife may be expected to still be in recovery from a physically traumatic experience.  The salient point of which would have been that Godric’s Hollow was, at last report, in Cornwall.”

“I’m very proud of you,” Evan said, at least eighty-five percent solemnly, and handed him a pickled something or other. It looked like fennel, or possibly celery.

“Too bloody right,” Severus sniffed, and bit it righteously in half.  It crunched.  He stared at the remainder dubiously, chewed, announced to the basket, “That’s odder than bloody pumpkins, but as it is not insipid, this time you may live,” and took another bite.

“He probably just throws anything he sees at market into the pickle jars and saves it to taunt you with to feel deliciously wicked without getting in any actual trouble ,” Evan said impatiently.

Severus pointed the unidentified pickled object at him, solemnly acknowledging the point.  “That I can respect.”  Crunch.

Evan’s mouth tugged up helplessly, but he pressed, “What did Potter want?”

“So many things,” Severus snorted, and began counting fingers.  The finger he was counting with came down so crisply that Filius half expected to see the rest falling to the sofa as he chopped at them.  “He’s owled to MESoP for the abstract on the Draught of Peace.  He’s backing off and ‘won’t tell’ unless I prove him right because something garbled about I care about Lily and he promised the Professor even though he thinks the latter is far too trusting.  Do not ask me to explain that sentence: I received no clarification myself.If he dislikes one single thing he finds out about the Draught he’s going to break my nose again.  I am a terrible influence on his idiot cousin—that’s you, I think,” he added to Evan.

“You’re sure it’s not Reg?  It’s usually Reg when they talk about who you’re a terrible influence on.”

“Well, he said I’m a terrible influence on his idiot cousin but he could see probably-you meant well and I should tell you as follows: never ever ever bloody do that again but hello from him and Lily.”

“Ah.”  Evan heaved a sardonic sigh.  “Yes, I expect that’s me.” Filius was itching to know what that was about, even though he rather thought he had some idea because of the very brief briefing Albus had given him regarding Thursday night’s brouhaha.   “Anything else?”

“Yes.  He’s absolutely positive that he’s right and Lily and the Professor have it completely up their jumper but he’s prepared to hope he’s wrong and er um uh uh uh thanks for looking after Lily that time that didn’t happen even if I was a complete bastard about it and he will absolutely break my nose again if, Draught, etcetera.  That I am, however, ‘a complete lunatic and when somebody saves your life they’ve saved your bloody life, it’s sort of a yes or no thing.’  That he does not in fact care about my position on this issue or want my gratitude, but considers that my position is, I quote, stupid and proves I have a pocket watch or at best a sneakoscope instead of a soul, which he considers a persuasive point in favor of him being right—by which I _think_ he meant right about my political affiliations, although, again, he never specified.  That despite his previously avowed intention to back off he will be watching me. That I should know all these things.  In addition, mushy peas.”

“Mushy peas.”

“He wanted them. I despair for the child’s palate.”  Severus turned to Filius, and asked, “What does this mean?”  He hooked his thumbs together and flapped his fingers in a birdlike gesture.

Filius coughed and drank tea.  “Flashed that at you, did he?”

“Yes.  It was very nearly subtle, too; one assumes he was _rigorously_ trained.  I returned it, which seemed to satisfy him. Which is, incidentally, _ridiculous,_ a mere mirroring of the opening recognition-gesture should _absolutely not be an acceptable response to it,_ you need to explain this _at once_ to all parties involved with small words and large letters and, if at all possible, _fire and crowbars,_ but I would like to know what I was claiming.”

He sighed, only partly because of Severus’s rather impertinent fit of well-intentioned temper. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t thought of that; there was just too much risk of certain members seizing on any hint of complexity and becoming too creative for everyone else to keep up with. Besides, no secret lasted forever, and when that one was broken and deciphered it would create an impression of juvenile unsophistication, and they could continue using that false front while actually stepping up security until and unless the opposition caught on.  

Despite the implications for either Severus’s opinion of his and Albus’s intelligence or Severus’s ability to believe anyone else could do anything properly or both (though he suspected it was mostly the latter), he was pleased by Severus’s instinctive reaction to the compromise that really did mean security was weak. It might have been overly dramatic, but he’d apparently played along smoothly in the moment, without prior warning (although someone would have to ask James Potter for his impressions), and had then at once come to bring his concerns to his contact.

Furthermore, his proposed solution hadn’t been to suggest a forced policy change, but to ensure that everyone understood the theory that would, in his opinion, have prevented their error. The right sort of instincts, and in more than one way. Which didn’t make any of the problems with his proposition about taking over Horace’s job disappear, but it was a point.

His sigh, however, was also because he didn’t really want to answer Severus’s question. “It’s… a consequence of internal Confederation politics.”  They gave him bright-eyed young-person looks, Severus while eating a largish lumpy fish-smelling fried thing with his hands.  “Albus can get away with one or two consultants on this matter who aren’t likely to stretch the budget allotted to the British branch of the Confederation, but the other national Mugwumps haven’t conceded that we’ve got enough of a problem to give it as much attention as Albus thinks it deserves, not when the bulk of our attention is already tied up in Ireland, which is _unquestionably_ an _international_ affair.”

“Motto House Gryffindor,” Evan proposed wryly.  “It’s forbidden and impossible; what are we waiting for?”

“Motto House Gryffindor,” Severus corrected sourly.  “The only benefit will be laurels on my grave—quick, how much are the tickets?”

Filius ignored this, which he felt was the only sane response for a responsible House Head. “There’s not much Albus can do about it in his capacity as Supreme Mugwump, until and unless the threat becomes clear and evident or the rest of them forgive him for dragging his feet when _they_ wanted _his_ help.  However, as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot he’s an officer of the law whose writ extends across the kingdom, and _that_ gives him the right to call up a _posse comitatus_ against a specific, identified threat _._ ”

Severus choked, and they looked at him curiously. “I can’t quite see Professor Dumbledore as a Cromwell.[2] _Yes, Professor, I know that’s backwards._ ”

“So long as you know… although I may say that Albus probably had the nose for it, before it was broken. In any case, the law wasn’t intended for one to operate in any sort of long-term way, but we do seem to be working with a criminal or group of criminals who are biding their time.  That makes it appropriate, I suppose.  And they’re all volunteers, which makes it doable.”

Severus looked at Evan and said, “This is why I keep saying razing everything to the ground and starting over would be quite a good idea.”  

“Do you?” asked Filius, raising an eyebrow.

Evan coughed.  “Some people get lost in mazes because they sort of get jostled in that direction and aren’t really paying attention because it’s a trusted and comfortable crowd.”  Filius waited for this to make sense, but Evan must have taken his waiting look as an accusatory one, because his shoulders moved slightly in what was, coming from a Slytherin pureblood, a giant squirm of embarrassment.  He moved an equally subtle-not-subtle protective centimeter in Severus’s protection and went on with a ghost of truculence that made Filius need to look away from him. “Some people go in even though the crowd isn’t quite so trusted because not only is there quite a lot of jostling but they thought their other option was walking on lava in sandals and they’ve heard a rumor there’s a fountain with a hose in the middle.”

“HAS IT OCCURRED TO ANYONE ON THE ENTIRE SODDING ISLAND,” Severus snarled furiously, apparently without noticing that his hand had curled around Evan’s wrist, “that there is such a thing as a _conflict of interest?_ ”

“Spike, I’m sure Professor Flitwick doesn’t care, but you should probably _practice,_ Mum’s right about habits, and you’ve been—”

“On the entire island,” he amended, rolling his eyes.  “Why does anyone think for a minute that that man is not our king?”

“Because he’s not?”

“ _He’s in control of everything that matters._ ”

“Spike, you knew that.”

“ _I didn’t know he knew how to exploit it!!!”_

“If you feel that strongly about Albus,” Filius frowned.

Severus cut him off.  “This is not about one person!”

“It’s really, really not,” Evan informed him, munching placidly on a chip.  “He can go on about structural problems in the Ministry and the Good Old Family network for ages, but I don’t particularly care to listen to it again if I don’t get to snog him to make him shut up when he really starts crackling, and he won’t let me if you’re here, so I’m just going to cut you both off before it gets started.”

They looked at him.  He smiled sleepily at them and ate another chip.

“I hate you,” Severus informed him resignedly, the hand around his wrist slipping down until their fingers were twined.

“I am by definition part of everything,” Evan agreed, all amiability, and wrapped an arm around his waist.  Severus drooped him a look that properly belonged on a basset hound, but didn’t fight it.

“Let’s get back,” Filius sighed, “to what you think the werewolves are going to do.”

“Be more vulnerable to being courted by people they’ll know damn well won’t have their best interests at heart but who they might, at that point, be more willing to use-and-be-used-by,” Severus replied promptly, evidently forgetting that he meant to look tormented and beleaguered.  “Why the bird sign?”

Faced with this evidence that Severus was capable of speaking plainly when motivated, Filius nevertheless did not turn his food back into live fish. Largely because the miraculous motivator seemed to be curiosity, and even if he didn’t currently sympathize with that much, he felt he ought to.

Instead, he shrugged and rewarded the unusual concision.  “He may not be flaunting them, but he didn’t bother trying to _hide_ what he was doing from the Confederation; that would have been a show of bad faith.  They think it’s funny, and they call the group Albus’s undomesticated pets.  Since there isn’t much training for them, by Confederation standards.  He’s a good sport, Albus is, so he went along with it.”

“All right…?”

“Albus _has_ an undomesticated pet,” Filius pointed out, and braced for it.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Severus said slowly, an unholy glee lighting his black eyes, “that Professor Dumbledore has named his super-secret lionhearted vigilante unutterably noble all-volunteer militia after the Incredible Crooning Torch-Turkey?”

“Most people find Fawkes rather impressive,” Filius commented while staring longingly at the cider bottle and wishing he’d charmed it bottomless.

“Then I take it most people have not been sent to the Hospital Wing because he’s too much of a glutton to take any notice of the distinction between a finger and a cinnamon stick,” retorted Severus.

“Most people find Fawkes impressive enough that they don’t try to give him treats while they’re sitting about waiting to be told off for fighting by their exasperated Headmaster for the umpteenth time that term even though they’re more than well advanced enough in Care of Magical Creatures to know that firebirds sing in harmony with the hearts of their chosen humans,” he elaborated.

“…I think Evan should show you those photos now,” Severus grumped.

* * *

 [1] Mín eaxlgestealla, heo beon na weorþlic (Old English, best effort; þ is pronounced ‘th’): My shoulder-companion (probably best translation is shield-brother and best modern equivalent is t’hy’la), it be not estimable/honorable/becoming.

你比这更好的 (Nǐ bǐ zhè gèng hǎo de): You are better than this. (Those half-circled vowels are, incidentally, hella hard to pronounce in the flow of a sentence for native-English speakers).

Ορκίζομαι στο Θεό ότι είστε καλύτεροι από αυτό (Orkízomai sto Theó óti eíste kalýteroi apó aftó): I swear to God you are better than this.

In hoc autem casu non postulat placet temptemini et peribunt: In this premise I am satisfied and do not require that the hypothesis be tested to destruction.

[2] Google “Richard Harris Cromwell.” ;) And, yes, wizards might well know about Oliver Cromwell; the English Civil War was two kings before Separation, per DH.


	8. Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus's brain chases its tail and chews on itself, and Albus imposes a Definitely Perfect Solution so it's all good no worries and why are you throwing a tantrum, dear boy?
> 
> Or: Albus tries to be a responsible headmaster and run a war at the same time for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** for Severusbrain and Albuswiles and SLYTHERIN! 
> 
> (Wow, how redundant was that...)

“Now, as I understand it,” Dumbledore said pleasantly, “when Professor Flitwick asked you if you thought you could handle the duties you’d asked Professor Slughorn to resign in your favor, you answered him, and please do correct me if I’ve been misinformed, ‘Sod if I know.’ Is that substantially correct?”

Severus’s shoulders slumped. “Nrg,” he admitted. It had been a half-baked idea in the first place. He _had_ panicked, there was no way around it, and getting shot down twice by the same allegedly nice-kind-and-caring bastard in one summer was only what he deserved for losing his head.

“You’re hired.”

Severus blinked. “Really,” he responded, not so much suspiciously, dryly, or skeptically as with the tone as one who’d just been tone the sky was a lovely shade of houndstooth. Not that he’d entirely put it past Dumbledore to make that happen, should the man wake up one day and decide that fireworks were overdone and Muggles explained away grosser violations of the Statute every day.

Which, of course, they did.

“Not quite,” Dumbledore assured him happily, “but it is most encouraging.”

Severus pursed his lips and tried not to think _you are a nutter_ so hard the roof actually fell in or started raining cashews. He reminded himself that Dumbledore was from the House of Hubris, where people thought his was the House of Bluff and Lies. It might be almost reasonable to suppose that a Gryffindor would expect a Slytherin who confidently said he could do a job without a strong resume to back it up to be pulling an everyday white-lie sort of con.

Except that Dumbledore had not only met Severus but had spent quite a bit of time with him over the last month. He ought to have bloody well understood by now that when it came to estimating one’s own abilities, Severus was about as close as a human being could get to having an accurate picture. A solid one, at least, human measurements and human brains not being especially well suited to the task. But as close as anyone was going to get: he could tell because he was still in one piece, and sane enough to converse with others and only have them look at him as if he’d grown horns or antennae… oh, perhaps thirty percent of the time. Forty at most.

And more, because he knew himself and the world and well enough to want most badly what (who) were best for him. And had slowly become, since choosing the House of careful thought (or, at least, rejecting any House that wouldn’t teach him thought at all), able to work with what he had to give them the parts of himself that they wanted (needed) without thrusting himself on them so hard and fast as to frighten or repel them away. There were, to him, harder things than that, impossible things. Even, between the two, a very, very narrow category of things that weren’t impossible but were still too hard to try, and he knew what they were, knew better than to try them. _What he could do_ was not a matter in which he could afford to be _deluded._

“Now, as I understand the matter,” said the wizard either delusional or, more likely, infuriating enough to offer him sickeningly cloying sweets every time they met, and twice when he was in trouble, “your concern isn’t the removal of Professor Slughorn, but to occupy your time in a way that leaves those you report to satisfied: that is, by becoming closer to me.”

“That’s the immediate and pressing concern,” Severus said slowly. This, clearly, was not a simple summation of his position as stated: Dumbledore was trapping him into something. Just because the old wizard was sure it would be beneficial for Severus (as was clearly the case; today’s twinkle was pure ‘I am brilliant and you’ll appreciate it soon even if you won’t admit it’) didn’t mean that it was, or that Severus should let himself be trapped.

It was a fair summation, though (if you put aside the way that Slughorn just stood aside and _let things happen_ to even the firsties if the prefects didn’t step up, and how utterly useless the old gasbag had been at teaching basic things like knifework, compared to Mam). Besides, if you didn’t let your allies exert themselves on your behalf, there was very little point in having them.

“Severus, my dear boy, was it your intention to present the appearance that you had confunded me?”

“ _Confounded._ No,” he explained, straightening his back and trying very, very hard not to have any thoughts about whether anyone wearing brocade in August (or, really, in the twentieth century at all) needed help in presenting that appearance. “He thinks you’re credulous and soft; I was going to play into that impression.”

“But surely, Severus, credulity can only be bent so far?”

Severus, through sheer force of will, refused to acknowledge that insult. Evan hadn’t thought the idea of his applying was mad, and Evan was biased but was also dead-set against Severus doing things Evan thought would be bad for him. And Severus was rather inclined to agree with the ‘most people have to be tricked into walking into hell’ face Flitwick had made, and Evan had been right there the whole time Hogwarts had been becoming as much hell as home for Severus, mostly fretting more than Severus had. If Evan thought it wasn’t mad, thought the question fell weightier on the right side of the cost-benefit balance sheet, it at least couldn’t be _frothingly insane,_ could it?

Slughorn also hadn’t thought it was mad, and all right, he might not have been in quite his usual frame of mind when the idea had been put to him, but Evan was sure that it had been one he’d been primed for and toying with already, if not one he’d meant to put into place so soon. The Dark Lord hadn’t thought it was unnatural at all: it had been his idea in the first place that Severus should apply for the DADA job. While that didn’t necessarily mean anything, _Dumbledore_ hadn’t thought it was _so_ crazy that he’d refused Severus an interview, either.

So it was definitely an insult. Dumbledore was probably testing his temper again.

“You’d be amazed what ‘he’s a soft weak person who thinks with his squishy red moist bits’ covers, put properly, when you’re dealing with someone who considers human connection a bafflingly foreign and rather distasteful vulnerability which was put on earth for the strong to exploit. Besides, I had a plan,” he insisted, trying not to cringe outwardly as he remembered it.

Dumbledore passed a meditative hand over his beard, only too obviously hiding a smile. “Was it a good plan?”

He hunched his shoulders. “Define your terms. I hated it, so he was going to love it.”

One of the bushy white eyebrows lifted. “Why is that?”

“He’s been on a bit of a humiliation kick lately. I believe he would have thought that embarrassing myself on purpose would be a sterling demonstration of loyalty.”

Dumbledore paused. “We’ll come back to that. Both aspects. I don’t believe anything complex or dramatic is needed at this time, but if it’s sound, we’ll keep it in reserve.”

Outwardly, Severus only inclined his head. He had to admit, though, that it was a a relief both to avoid having to put Operation Gilded Lily into place, at least for now, and to have a serious discussion with someone who could both stay on topic and demonstrate a sense of priority.

A sense of priority in which Severus’s personal well-being was not so dramatically overinflated as to get in the way of all other considerations. That it did, in Ev’s case, probably should have made him feel (in addition to cared-about, naturally) smug or guilty, but was in fact mostly a bit worrying.

“In the meantime, you may be pleased to know that Horace did, in fact, come to me to resign, although I have not accepted his resignation for this coming year.”

Severus was pleased, actually, in a bitter, _well at least there’s that_ sort of way. He might have hopelessly overreached in trying to pressure a decision out of Dumbledore from a distance, he might be staring into an abyss that he could already feel not just staring back but creeping out, but at least he wasn’t completely shite at tactical scene design.

While he had certainly unnerved Slughorn as intended, unless he very much missed his guess he hadn’t done it in a way that should have put the old man off him—at least, not badly or for long. Sluggy would still want to help him after this; would certainly want to find him another out and would almost certainly trust that he’d want to take one (even if there probably wasn’t another one that it would be possible to take).

He’d drunk Severus’s tea, after all, apparently without thinking that Severus might have taken an antidote to something in it in advance. And he’d take the fact that it _had_ turned out to just be tea as reassuring, when he remembered the possibility and panicked and checked himself for everything under the sun. After all, Severus didn’t have a House reputation for the sort of doublethink that might have suggested to Slughorn that Severus, by only serving tea that was tea, had _intended_ him to be reassured.

Severus rather felt that his House should have remembered that the vast majority of his socialization had been done by Narcissa Black, even if he’d never had the forced-opportunity to display any skill as a host himself. Even if the subtle giving and withholding of tokens of approval and the like was neither his preferred method nor really within his current means. It was their responsibility if they allowed themselves to forget and be fooled.

“However,” Dumbledore continued. There was, in his voice, a note so irredeemably and uniquely Griffish that it took Severus a moment to sort it out. There was some confusion and some concern, and altogether it sounded to Severus like _you’ve missed your cue to argue with me, dear Wild Thing, aren’t you feeling well?_

Severus looked up at him, sharply and warily. Oh, he was unquestionably being herded into a trap, there was not the smallest iota of doubt about it. He hated how thick-skulled Dumbledore made him feel sometimes, but it wasn’t really _stupid_ not to be able to follow the thought processes or predict the conclusions or ideas of someone who not only seemed but could be _assumed_ to be, as a reputedly legitimate bell-curve genius, completely crazy outside his areas of brilliance and, therefore, logically speaking, unpredictable in _any_ areas by reasonably intelligent and reasonably sane people. Was it?

Of course it was. There was no such thing as an _actual_ genius: genius was a thing declared of people by people. There were no really, genuinely, _scientifically_ reliable measurements, even among muggles. Intelligence was a quality whose nature was highly, highly debatable: not an absolute, but something that could manifest in a person in any way from ‘enough intelligence in enough categories to more or less prevent having any friends ever’ to ‘not much in any’ to ‘just about enough to get by on in just about enough to be getting on with’ to ‘awe-inspiring amounts, but absolutely-only in sort-of-one-depending-on-how-you-define-your-categories.’

Dumbledore was _acclaimed_ as a genius, and the wizarding world didn’t use _any_ reliable measures for that sort of thing. Worse, he wasn’t so much acclaimed a genius _generally speaking_ as deemed a savant in the field of alchemy, which was largely a lost art.

Acclaimed largely by people who knew very little about it, who largely didn’t even know that when they said he was doing alchemy they mostly meant he was doing alchemical technomancy these days. By people who were probably easily impressed once they’d met him and been bowled over by his faux Olde Worlde courtesy and frankly ridiculously oversized magical presence.

Ergo: Severus was just making excuses out of self-dissatisfaction and looming hysteria, which was unaffordably self-indulgent.

He got twinkled at again.   Ugh. “While I feel that such an extreme transition would not be good for the school—you must recall, Severus, that we are already planning to begin the school year with two new teachers, since the loss of our Divinations professor and our most recent DADA instructor. In addition, Professor Slughorn has been the master of Slytherin House for over sixty years now. While it might be of some help that many of the current Slytherins will remember you—”

Delicate of him not to mention that other upper-form students would as well. Severus supposed he might have taken as a compliment that Dumbledore didn’t choose to believe he needed reminding, but frankly he didn’t feel the choice merited it. Too bloody obvious by half.

“—The switch to such a young Head in such an eventful year would be too much of a shock, I feel.”

“There _really isn’t_ any other Slytherin on the faculty but Kettleburn-who-hardly-counts?” Severus asked in disbelief. He felt that someone who kept on in a career despite losing _more than one_ body part to it more properly belonged in Gryffindor, himself, and Kettleburn had never struck him as being particularly serpentine.

On the other hand, Flitwick had said he’d changed schools constantly as a student, and you needed Slytherin qualities to survive that kind of childhood without either withering completely or coming to the very firm conclusion that real friends were for other people. Kettleburn didn’t isolate himself, and didn’t have that glossy feel that the popular-and-friendless like Lockhart and Lucius and the Dark Lord had.

“Oh, I would offer the position to Professor Babbling, should the need arise, and I suppose her seniority would lead her to be insulted if I didn’t,” he began.

It hadn’t quite been a question, but Severus nodded firmly, if not actually fervently. He’d never been on Professor Babbling’s bad side, and while he didn’t know of any special reason to fear landing on it, that didn’t mean he was eager to when it wasn’t necessary. It would especially rankle to find himself there just because someone _else_ had been clumsy.

“But I can’t imagine anything that would induce her to accept it. If I were fool enough to offer it to her twice while in her office, in fact, I hope I would be wise enough to do so in full plate-mail armored with a strong protective charm. She keeps displays of runically-etched weaponry on her walls, you know.”

“…Either you need to review your hiring criteria or Slughorn’s policy on explaining to people that tomorrow’s Ministry is populated by today’s firsties must be really interesting.”

He didn’t blame Professor Babbling; neither politics nor philosophy were her fields. The school should have been _overrun_ with Slytherin teachers, though. _Everyone_ with an axe to grind should have wanted Slughorn’s job, and at least _one or two_ should have been qualified enough and with harmless enough axes to make Dumbledore think they were worth it.

For pity’s sake, even considering the school’s slow rate of turnover, Dumbledore’s office and the Board of Governors should both have been _flooded_ with offers to replace Binns for _years._ Many of those applicants should have gone to a great deal of trouble to make themselves more than attractive enough to be very tempting propositions even if Binns had not only refused to go but thrown a tantrum and threatened to join Peeves in poltergeistery. So was the problem with Dumbledore’s intransigent bigotry, or in Slytherin?

“The latter, I think. Would you like to know the name of the last Slytherin who applied for a professorship, before yourself?”

It was a tone with a cunning hook in it. Severus stared into the innocent blue eyes and asked slowly, eyes narrowing as he allowed a touch of temper into his voice, “Is it by chance a name I recently asked you _not to say in my presence?”_

“Oh,” Dumbledore said placidly, “I do apologize, Severus, how careless of me,” and popped a sweet into his mouth.

It was just as well, because he was on a completely different sweet by the time Severus’s vision had cleared of the fog of red. He carefully refocused his eyes, relaxed his throat, and unclenched his fingers from around the knobs of his chair’s arms. “Is there anything,” he asked evenly, “which might induce you to reconsider accepting Professor Slughorn’s request?”

Dumbledore was eyeing him in an interest which wasn’t quite alarm yet but was in no way casual. “Why do you ask, my boy?”

“I believe,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully and keep his hands from shaking in rage at the same time, “that it would be well-done of you.”

“And why is that?”

“Because,” he said, using every scrap of discipline Narcissa had ever kicked into him to force his voice cordial and his mouth into a smile, though he couldn’t ungrit his teeth and he knew the skin around his eyes was white, “ it isn’t healthy for a House to have at its heart a Head who’s given up on it.”

Dumbledore sat back, bemused. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Severus.”

“You just confirmed my supposition that he’s been gently steering everyone in his own House away from thinking about having any influence on children other than their own,” Severus said flatly. “What is there to follow?”

“Have you considered that he might simply prefer to have this field of play to himself?” Dumbledore asked curiously.

Severus eyed him. “‘Simply?’” he repeated, not bothering to hide his offense on behalf of his Head of House. He might be angry with Walrusface himself, but there were limits. “Professor, I appreciate your attempt at solidarity, but there’s no need to humor me by being gratuitously insulting.”

“Whatever can I have been thinking,” Dumbledore murmured, hand over his beard again.

“I _did_ consider that to have been his primary motive,” he said, reminding himself he was dealing with a Gryffindor and therefore opting to be crisp instead of annoyed, “but now that you’ve raised the possibility, a lack of conviction—a lessening of _attachment_ to the House, of pride in it—fits his behavior better. I’ve always been pleased that both Lily and the House’s reputation benefited from his very _loudly_ liberal attitude, but it was always clear that he was surprised when a non-pureblooded student performed well, and, after all, there’s no proponent so vociferous as a recent convert. Those who haven’t had to be convinced about an issue and have no unease seldom bother to protest their opinions.”

If asked, he would have had to admit that he was aware that he himself bothered to _explain_ his opinions rather more often than ‘seldom,’ but that was because a) people were stupid and b) he sometimes felt Lily’s eyes on the back of his neck being challenging or reproachful at him despite the Narcissa-voice in his head telling him that keeping his peace would be the intelligent and tactful option. And sometimes, when it was disappointed instead of nagging and ‘tactful’ more than ‘intelligent,’ the eyes had it.

“Horace is hardly the first to have relaxed his viewpoint on certain matters over the last several decades. Regardless, I confess _I_ refused the last Slytherin applicant for the reason you suggest,” Dumbledore mused.

“Me?” he asked sharply.

“No, no, my boy, the one before you that I mentioned. In June, first and foremost I had more experienced applicants.”

Severus nodded, although he let a trace of skepticism show. It was a perfectly legitimate answer, except that he didn’t believe ‘first and foremost’ for a moment.

“And now, as I said, I’m refusing to accept Horace’s resignation, for the moment, for the reasons I’ve already laid out.   However, as I was _going_ to say—really, Severus, you needn’t look as if I were threatening your pet kneazle.”

Severus had, once, had a pet pigeon. For about a week. Or maybe two days that felt like a week. He couldn’t exactly remember; his first few days at Hogwarts had been nightmarish and had seemed to stretch on forever. Actually, his friendless first year and a half had. Oh, Lily had still been his staunch friend (of course she had; he hadn’t had any other friends for her to disapprove of) but he’d only had two classes with her. Every other hour had dismally dragged that hadn’t flashed towards his eyes like fists and knives. His time sense had suffered shockingly before he’d adjusted his old tricks to life in a stone castle full of shouting.

So it might have been anywhere from a day to a week after he’d looked around in King’s Cross, realized everyone else had a cat or owl, and secured the first luckless bird that moved too slowly that someone else’s pet possibly-kneazle had eaten it. Probably Avery’s; , Avery’s cat had been less _spastically insane_ than Mulciber’s and therefore more likely to succeed in a hunt, if that meant anything. But he didn’t remember that with excessive clarity, either, since Evan had somehow (if there had been an actual conversation involved, Severus had not been present, but there probably hadn’t. As far as he’d ever been able to tell, Ev and Narcissa mostly made things happen by osmosis) gently and definitely explained to everyone that the beginning of the Christmas hols would be the end of animals in their dorm room. Forever.

Which was _months_ longer than Severus had been plagued with his pigeon. He hadn’t even got around to naming it anything better than ‘Gerroutofit You Bloody Bird.’ This moniker, it transpired, had been prophetic. No one had so much as pretended to be sorry, including Severus.

So it probably didn’t count as having had a pet. Even if it did, he was sure that ‘fervent relief accompanied by mild annoyance about blood and feathers all over one’s bed’ was not the reaction to pet-death that Dumbledore was thinking of.

“As I was going to say, Professor Slughorn _has_ been teaching for over sixty years. Now, I simply can’t let the old fellow run out on a whim a month before term starts, but if he’s genuinely ready to retire, in a considered and responsible manner, why, that would be another matter.”

Severus eyed him. Warily.

Dumbledore eyed him back. Affectionately. It wasn’t the sort of threatening to make him want to flare his insubstantial hood, but he could definitely feel the hackles he didn’t have spiking up. “Severus, you’re looking at me as if I’m threatening your kneazle again.”

“I haven’t got a kneazle.”

“Crup?”

“I don’t keep pets, sir, and if I was supposed to try and read your mind I would have appreciated some sort of prearranged signal.” He winced inwardly at himself, but reminded himself that even if a cobra was one of the most embarrassing serpents it was possible to be, it was still a snake and no one could say it wasn’t. He could almost hear Ev being fond about him for it, but Ev was _loony_ and really didn’t count.

Anything was a step above threadsnakes like the Carrows, of course, which was some comfort. Severus supposed that Narcissa, as a Black, could get away with things like that. He thought he would have at least tried to find a less blazingly obvious show of contempt to brand his Housemates with forever, in her shoes, though.   Even if they had completely deserved it for being caught charging third-year Ravenclaws a ‘tax’ on their Honeydukes purchases after Hogsmeade weekends.

She hadn’t even bothered to give them _individual and differentiated_ blazons of scorn.  This, although there was some precedent for twinning twins, had inspired Severus to name his next flavor of malomel ‘Geminus’[1] and leave sample bottles lying conspicuously around, out of sheer admiration for a fellow-artist.  When it had been pointed out to him that there weren’t any magical or otherwise interesting ingredients in the mead, he’d shrugged innocently and dismissively and said he didn’t feel it had merited any.

Still, even if cobras were better than bugs’-egg-eating practically-worms, and certainly legitimately snakes, Severus thought it would be nice if someday he could learn to employ a little subtlety when he was actually in a conversation with someone and not just sitting quietly in a room plotting carefully to himself with a quill in his hand. He might someday forgive his mother for how doomed a prospect that probably was, but most likely they’d just have to get on as they were.

Once she was ready to talk to him again at a reasonable volume, at any rate. Bloody _elves_. He couldn't blame her. For once, he didn’t blame either of his parents. But what other cover story would have worked? And even Da liked Lily, so he’d get over it. Severus would get Lils to visit him with the baby; that should do it.

It would be completely explicable. She’d spent so many summers up his way it would be odd if she _didn’t_ take her new baby around to meet her old neighbors. The old hens would never forgive her if she didn’t. And they would find out, and probably had already, because Lily had almost certainly not thought to tell her mum not to write everyone she knew to gloat about being a grandmother. Entirely certainly, in fact, since Severus hadn’t thought of it, until just now. Ugh. Had Evan? He would have if the Evanses had been magical. Maybe he had and he’d just realized right away that, since Dobby had let the Dark Lord know (via Mr. Rosier via Linkin) about the two boys’ mutual birthday, there was no point trying to keep it under wraps.

Severus hoped that was it. He was, if he was honest with himself, a little afraid to ask. Ev was astonishingly good, for a pureblood, about treating everyone he was introduced to in the same way (i.e., being charmingly drowsy at them until he was given a reason to believe they were interesting). However, while he thought instinctively about the probable reactions of entire networks of wizards he’d never met and what was due to them, he couldn’t be relied on to realize that a muggle he hadn’t been introduced to so much as existed, even when he was _at that moment_ speaking with their immediate relative.

Then again, Ev had spent more time travelling than a lot of British wizards. It might just be that he was operating on the unconsciously arrived-at premise that that speculating based on assumptions made in cultural ignorance could get a person into awkward positions if not actual trouble. Which was, of course, true, and when one was dealing with completely alien mindsets like centaurs and house-elves had, it really was best to approach them from a position of conscious, declared, open-minded ignorance. And while Severus found the idea that wizards and muggles should find each other quite so alien as that not only dubious but dangerous, he’d grown up so much with a foot in each world that he knew himself to be no judge at all. Maybe Ev was right not to try to predict muggles the way he could wizards, after all, rather than being… well, what he’d been raised to be.

“An excellent idea!” Dumbledore nodded, proving he himself was doing no mind-reading by being delighted and evidently completely oblivious to Severus’s surface sarcasm and deeper _just because I don’t know what you’re doing doesn’t mean I can’t tell you’re doing it_ sulk. It was depressingly hard to tell with him, though. He was _good_ at blithely soaring over Behavior He Wanted To Make You Feel Petty About. Severus had never been able to keep at least a flicker of contempt off his face when someone was being small, and glumly supposed he never would be. “We shall have to come up with one. Something quite subtle, of course.”

“You were saying?” Severus prompted, trying hard to sound more impatient than plaintive.

“I was saying that while I haven’t yet accepted Horace’s resignation, I did approve his request for, well, let’s call it a teaching assistant, for the moment, rather than an apprentice.” He paused thoughtfully and picked up what looked like a yellow Flying Saucer. Severus supposed his sweets bowl must be enchanted, but all that mess jumbled together outside their wrappers made him wince. “Well, I say ‘his request.’”

Severus sat back and blinked. His eyebrows drew together and he frowned. He looked at Dumbledore, and out the window (a blue that wasn’t particularly deceptive up here in Hogsmeade, though in London the air was getting sticky again and Severus thought another storm was on the way). Then he fished a licorice snap out of the bowl, smashing its fanged mouth flat with his fingers before it could bite him.

It wasn’t quite a Victory V, but then he didn’t see any particular reason that triumph and a shakingly-relieved-and-terrified two fingers held up towards everyone at _not-home_ who’d ever been sure he’d never amount to anything to should be laced with chloroform and ether. They probably didn’t still put those into the mix, but they had when the lozenges were made in Nelson. Severus had always told himself that he didn’t understand why they’d put those in the original recipe, since he could imagine several ways to abuse the things. He had, during summers home from school, occasionally looked up from his Potions revision at the cold factory chimney, rested his head against whatever scraggy tree he was sitting against, and let himself have a moment of dark irony over the whole business.

He said, “I see.”

“You understand, my boy, that I can’t offer you anything permanent at the moment,” Dumbledore warned. “This may be a one-term proposition, or we may begin to have you taking a class or two in January, or something in-between. We shall have to see where we are at Christmas.”

“Presuming we all live to Christmas,” Severus said dourly.

“Why do you say that?” asked Dumbledore sharply.

Severus blinked at him, and then waved a reassuring hand to show he didn’t have any particular reason to think they wouldn’t. “Because something important has, during its crucial juncture, failed to go explosively wrong,” he explained.

He didn’t feel that the way Dumbledore didn’t stop laughing for far too long, however annoying it was, really balanced out that very worrying fact.

Shouting, “MURPHY WAS AN OPTIMIST,” at him should have made Severus feel a bit better, except it only set the old goat off again.

On the plus side, clearly being cooped up in a castle with this man and people who could tolerate him and _actually having to interact with them_ was going to be torturous. Maybe if he focused on that, the malicious universal force that masqueraded as karma so it could look righteous while it fucked with him would only run over him repeatedly and not drop on him from a great height.

Unless he had that the wrong way ‘round. He probably did.

He sighed. On the other plus side that wasn’t really a plus side, as long as Dumbledore kept laughing, Severus was not having to ask about money. Or whether he was going to have to actually live in the castle. Or, if he did, how usual it was for Hogwarts staff to have extremely discreet permanent guests. And, if that was unheard of, to explain that it was about to be heard of, although obviously only by Dumbledore, because unfortunately his acceptance of a position that had _just been created for him,_ for reasons that were much more important than he was, was going to have to be contingent on it, due to his being almost medically pathetic.

Because he wasn’t going to explain about what happened when Ev got bored and lonely. The obscene way the warm, inviting, flickering hearth glassed blue and smooth and distant over splintery, frostbitten shards would not be part of the discussion. The only reason Severus didn’t feel guilty about letting his safety be on the priority list, would never let anyone make him think himself a coward for it, wasn’t information anyone needed, or ever would.

Murphy _was_ an optimist, too, because before Severus even could screw his Bullheadedly Pragmatic up enough to begin the discussion of practical matters, Dumbledore wiped his eyes and asked seriously, “Severus, you do understand that an integral part of this position is that you will, as you would not as a full-fledged professor, have _some,_ ah, free time on your hands, although perhaps not so much as you would with a position supplied by others.”

August iced over. “So just implosively wrong, then,” he said levelly, and the words puffed out white from his mouth.

“Think about it, my dear boy,” Dumbledore said sadly—almost beseechingly, if it hadn’t been so clearly a command.

“It hardly takes thinking,” he snapped, folding his arms tightly. He shouldn’t have been surprised at all. Of _course_ Dumbledore wanted the Dark Lord’s brewer, if there was going to be Someone Doing That Job As A Job, to be someone he himself could control, who would talk to him. “But if he uses someone else, it’s not likely they’ll be so good that you, myself, and Professor Slughorn couldn’t decipher their work fairly quickly.”

“Perhaps not, but will he use someone else for more than grunt work, if he has a loyal brewer of your skill, even if not so much of your time is dedicated to creative pursuits as he might have preferred? Surely, if he can have none of your time at all, he could have all the time of a second choice. And I don’t think, Severus, that we should leave ‘fairly quickly’ to chance if we need not. There may come that one time when it would be worth discarding artifice to prevent the harm that would be done by an unavoidable delay.”

Severus stared bitterly past Dumbledore’s hat. He would not, would _not_ say _You were supposed to stop me,_ like a child, but the words were ringing in his head and nothing could get past them.

“It may all be worry over nothing,” Dumbledore said quietly, standing up and coming around to put a hand on his shoulder. “After all, the St. Mungo’s Grant Committee hasn’t even met yet, and I hear they’ve been receiving great pressure to continue funding your project. And, as I understand it, your tip-off about pressure coming from the other direction is ephemeral. But if you _have_ understood it correctly, Severus, and if I have understood the affair at the Orkneys correctly, and if these disappearances are indeed the warning knells I take them for…”

He was waiting for a question or a cow-eyed prompting look or something of that nature. Severus would eat _Hagrid’s treacle fudge_ before he’d give him anything of the sort.

One thing you could say for Dumbledore, he knew when to give in gracefully on the little things (Severus, who considered that he’d never won one of the big things in his life (unexpectedly had one plop curiously into his lap was another matter, and unsnatched miracles neither could nor should be counted as anything so base or tawdry as winning), appreciated that in a person he was forced by circumstance to talk to). The sigh was almost inaudible. “…Then I am very much afraid we may have to settle not for a stopper but a bottleneck.”

“Insufficient,” Severus snapped. “There’ll have to be an origin point for antidotes to anything new, or old enough to seem new. If they come from inside the castle it’ll be suspect. That means we’ll need a workaround, and if you want your ridiculous metaphor capped you’ll have to do it yourself.”

Dumbledore considered this, and then plucked an ordinary starlight mint out of his sweets bowl. It grew into a candy cane in his hands, and developed several intricate loops and swoops. He handed it to Severus. It was hollow and, when the fanciful shape had been deciphered, appeared designed to be put into two glasses and drunk by one mouth. “I believe,” Dumbledore said, sounding pleased with himself, “that they call it a ‘bended straw.’”

Severus’s eyes flicked up. It was as he’d feared. There was, indeed, twinkling.

Despondently, he sighed, “I come with a roommate, if you think I’m killing anybody myself you can go take a flying leap; I’ve already got _him_ to agree I shouldn’t so don’t you bloody start. I’ll work with whoever I have to but you won’t make me be pals with Potter no matter how you pull his strings, even if you suddenly start to do it _less ineptly,_ I’m not taking a pay cut, and otherwise I give up.”

“Well, that seems more than fair, in the main,” Dumbledore said, patting his shoulder again. “I do enjoy our chats, Severus; I never know whether they’ll be baroque beyond the dreams of man or take such extreme shortcuts I’m tempted to call it apparition. It’s quite like reaching into a box of beans. Your contract already covers your ‘clean-hands’ clause, incidentally; I don’t know if you recall, but you insisted on it at some length.”

“Usually when people call me an apparition,” Severus said gloomily, “they go straight to ‘dementor.’ I brought it up again because _you’re pushing it._ ”

“Now, now,” said Dumbledore paternally, still patting. “Save that face until you have to mark your first set of student vials.”

“I’m not worried about the labwork,” Severus retorted out of a hopelessly depressed willingness to change the subject and six years’ lucrative-but-hideous tutoring experience which, for the last two years, he _had not missed at all_. Doing Belby’s peer-review for him involved much more advanced work and no one gaping at him in sniffly dismay (they wrote back with furious insults instead, although, sadly, not usually very creative ones) and was therefore much more fun, although coming from adults there was absolutely no excuse for the grammar. “It’s the _essays._ ”

“Marvelous,” Dumbledore beamed. “I can see you’ll have the hang of it in no time.”

Severus sighed.

“But we’re going to have to talk about the question of a roommate.”

It wasn’t that Severus thought he couldn’t have _got away_ with screaming ORDER OF PRIORITY: I USED IT at Dumbledore. It was just that shouting at him twice in one conversation would have lessened the impact of the tactic, and he had a dismal feeling that he was going to need it.

* * *

[1] Cherry and pear-flavored, with the two heads of a bicephalic snake ( a horned viper, in honor of Selwyn, who in her first year as a prefect had been the one to put a stop to that nonsense from her own form, possibly by beating them up physically although no one was quite sure) separating on the label to reach for two paired cherries on their stem.


	9. Lord (Voldemort) Knows Where (Probably)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything besides the things that Severus couldn't stop that tedious old fart Dumbledore from demanding is TOTALLY Lord Voldemort's idea. Because of being things he really cares about. Yup. Poor ol' Sev is totally helplessly caught between his terrible two masters like a rope in tug-of-war. It's just awful. There may be tragic violins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : See chapter title. In her own words, my beta's reactions to this chapter 'fell within the "grinning broadly/dancing with glee" and "looking pale/faintly nauseated" spectrum.'

The Dark Lord looked coldly down at the bent head of his servant. "The Dark Lord," he said softly, "is not accustomed to being summoned by his servants, Severus."

"Summon you, sir!" Severus repeated, astonished, his head jerking up. "My lord, my intention was to request an audience, and I am grateful to have been granted one."

Mollified, Lord Voldemort sat back and stroked Acanthus's elegant triangular head as she coiled around his shoulders. Perhaps, now that he considered the matter, Severus's rather stark wording could be attributed, judging by the inkblots, to excitement rather than a peremptory manner.

And, after all, it hadn't been so _very_ disrespectful, merely lacking in the floral language that his older and better-bred correspondents annoyed him with. Only yesterday he had remarked to himself that if he thought they knew the dreadful, common name his weakling of a mother had hung on him, he would have thought they were doing it on purpose to mock him with the poverty of his upbringing.

"Very well," he kindly allowed Severus to live pain-free. "Stand. You have news that could not wait?"

Rising, his devoted made a little shrugging gesture with his hands. "I thought my lord would wish to know straight away." He straightened his shoulders into a reporting posture, oily-looking rainbows repositioning themselves in his dark hair. "Since my failure to obtain the position of Defense against the Dark Arts instructor at the end of May, I have, sir, as you know and as instructed, taken advantage of Dumbledore's addiction to feeling himself a do-gooder to continue my association with him: by presenting myself as helpless against my own mind and in dire need of occlumency instruction."

"I do know," the Dark Lord agreed, giving Severus an _I have only so much patience_ look.

Severus swallowed, but it wasn't the noisy gulp he'd been getting from some others since he'd made a point of making an example of someone in each of his little groups of Death Eaters. Many of them, of course, had never known what endurance meant. He'd had to use the cruciatus curse with Severus right from the beginning just to get the boy's _attention._

As he had it now—and without those irritating _wet_ fumbling assurances the merest suggestion of the lash had started to bring out in those who called himself his faithful but had only begun to realize he was not playing games—he asked, "And how does it progress?"

Severus turned a hand. "It progresses, sir, but that wasn't what I wanted to speak to you about."

"Well?" He tapped his fingers on Acanthus's smooth side impatiently, and heard her tongue flicker by his ear.

Usually, Severus kept a grave and sober face with his master, except when he'd just been punished. Now he lifted his black eyes to the Dark Lord and they were glowing with satisfaction, and as much as he fought it, he couldn't completely hold back his smile. "My lord, while I still have not been appointed to the position you originally sent me to try for, I have obtained a post in the castle for the coming school year."

He'd probably been as taken aback as this since the sanctimonious old fart had set his wardrobe on fire, but just now he couldn't think of when.

Rather blankly, he said, "It's August." Hogwarts always opened on September First.

Severus's chin lifted slightly, and he gave the Dark Lord a look that said _if you were anyone else I would be taking umbrage right now. Sir._ Stiffly, he said, "You gave me a mission, my Lord. Having a set-back doesn't mean that if I see a way to fulfill it I'll let that pass."

Lord Voldemort ground his teeth together in frustration. He had just gone to a great deal of trouble—or, rather, put some of his more influential followers to a great deal of trouble—to see to it that Severus's talents would be available to him as he escalated the growing unnamed threat for the politicians he backed to stand against. It was all very well for his eagerly bloodthirsty to kidnap the helpless and make them disappear, and for his cleverly cruel to curse everyday merchandise for muggles to take home to keep the Improper Use of Magic Office busy.

But what Lord Voldemort could do with a potions-brewer who could walk softly and understood factories, breweries as muggles meant the word, milk-processing plants.

And he couldn't rip the interfering fool who was trying to ruin his plans into shreds. Not when the ruination was done in devotion, in obedience to his last instructions. It would set a _terrible_ precedent. He didn't _want_ his Death Eaters thinking they should be able to read his mind or anticipate changes in his orders. Some of them might try.

But perhaps… "How final is it, my own, that you will be taking… this position?"

Taken aback, Severus began to look worried, as well he ought. "Well," he said slowly, "fairly. I jumped at it, of course, as I thought you wanted me to—don't you?"

Lord Voldemort waved a hand. "I had developed other plans for you, my own, since the first was not successful, but we shall see. Go on. You said 'fairly'?"

Severus nodded, more worried. "For his part, the offer is contingent on my fulfilling certain conditions, which I thought reasonable and, in fact, sensible, and," he winced apologetically, "I'm afraid that I've already told him so. He seemed to regard the matter as settled, and, as I told you, I was quick to accept a way to insert myself into the life of the castle. While I suppose I could pull out, I think I'd need a quite good excuse to keep him from being suspicious, sir.

"And," he added wryly, "with his vanity, when I say 'a quite good excuse' I may be rather understating the matter. He _might_ concede that an apprenticeship with," he waved a hand helplessly, "Nicholas Flamel would trump a lowly staff position at his humble school, but frankly, I doubt it. Death of the entire family? 'Tragic, my boy, you must take time to heal. Join us on September the Fourteenth.'"

The Dark Lord snorted agreement, genteelly. "Very well, Severus, what is this 'lowly staff position?' I suppose that the caretaker has access everywhere," he mused, "and the mediwizard sees students at their most vulnerable, but," he added severely, "I don't believe that you would be very much use to me as librarian, and I can't believe that Dumbledore would ever rid himself of that oaf Hagrid. Although a liason to the creatures of the Forbidden Forest _could_ be useful…"

"Not that lowly, my Lord," Severus said dryly.

"Hogwarts has no other staff in residence, save its faculty and elves," Lord Voldemort said, letting his tone be the warning.

"Perhaps the word was poorly chosen," Severus retreated from his uppity foray into irony with a bow of his head. He did look as though he was already regretting it.

"Severus," Lord Voldemort sighed sadly, changing his mind, "if Dumbledore's vanity is his patronage, then yours is your wit. If you would beard the lion, you must learn to put your judgment before your tongue. Your master will teach you."

He was pleased to note that Severus was already closing his eyes in resignation and settling to his knees as he spoke. In recognition of this submission, he rose to put a fatherly hand on Severus's hair—and then thought better of that and moved it to his shoulder before touching the dubious-looking stuff.

He had thought to keep his hand there for the entire cruciatus, to give encouragement even in the midst of the harsh lesson, but Severus was moved by it more powerfully than usual, convulsing violently to the ground in the first paroxysm, although he controlled himself better afterwards. It had been some time since the Dark Lord had felt called on it to punish Severus, he recalled. Perhaps one could grow inoculated, to some extent, and grow unaccustomed again. It would be an interesting experiment.

He was just as pleased, really, that the spasms had pulled his servant away from his touch. It turned out to be rather distasteful to feel the warm twitching against his hand—not at all what he remembered from when he'd been younger and his body had been hungry, nothing like the cool, calming, unobtrusive slide of his snake over his robes.

It flickered over his mind that Bellatrix's fierce, dewy-eyed, prideful devotion with its accompanying bodice-accentuating tailoring had started striking him as increasingly tedious since she'd had the colossal audacity to play dress-up with his Horcruxes. He dismissed the thought; of course he was impatient with her. She'd been a fool, and he'd nearly had to kill her, and then he would have had to deal with uproar in her very arrogant, wealthy, and well-connected family. Naturally he'd been more concerned with her foolishness than her décolletage since she'd proved an unfit guardian for any but the weakest and least-cursed of his treasures.

He sighed, putting his wand away. It was all weakness, anyway. If the full-stop of death was secondmost as a horror only to the Hell those doughlike fools of muggles had tried to frighten him with as a child, then surely the moist and panting indignity of humanity was at least fifteenth on the list. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd been told by the magicless clods that the biggest room in the world was room for improvement, but (he smiled mirthlessly) even a stopped clock was right twice a day. His mind was clearer every day, and even his skin felt purer, somehow.

Perhaps, maybe, hopefully just a bit purified himself, Severus scraped himself back to his knees, shaking with the uncontrollable tremors the curse left in its wake, and said wearily, as usual, "Yes, sir."

"As this was a lesson, my own, and not a punishment, you may take your remedy."

Severus, eyes downcast, pushed out a few grateful-sounding words and did so. The muscles of his mouth must not have been quite under his control yet, for all he managed was a mumbling, "'Kyou-sirr."

"Now, what is the exact nature of this position you have been offered?"

He raised his eyebrows when Severus, somewhat recovered in the wake of his potion, had explained. He noted, "Hogwarts does not usually have such… assistant professorships."

"As I understand it," Severus explained, with a demurely eyes-sidewards half-smile that all but screamed how much credit he was giving himself, "it was Dumbledore's compromise when Slughorn tried to resign so close to the start term in a year where he was having to replace two teachers already. A potentially-transitional period during which Slughorn is relieved of some of his workload." He slid the Dark Lord an ironic we-know-him-don't-we look and added, "For a given value of 'some.' I have no illusions."

"I had heard no rumors of Horace Slughorn wishing to retire," Lord Voldemort said, in the same notational tone.

Severus looked up at him, and if he wasn't smug he was certainly proud of himself and expecting praise. "My lord," he reminded Voldemort, "gave his consent for me to have close access to him for a whole week. In the vicinity of his quite elderly contemporaries and his junior colleagues, in a forum where intense discussion of advances in his field were not merely acceptable but expected. My Lord, it required only decision and stamina to make him feel how far he lags behind the cutting edge, and to make him think he has greatly slowed down and is very tired."

Severus paused. "In fact, I'm not at all sure that he _has_ slowed down as a result of age," he added with a sort of scathing judiciousness, "rather than simply always having been inclined to be sedentary and take as little effort over the necessities as possible. In either case, in an atmosphere like that it's quite easy to draw a contrast between his overstuffed velvet armchairs and other people's eagerness to sit up half the night arguing new advances."

"How industrious," the Dark Lord murmured.

"I had thought you'd wish it, sir," Severus explained again, drooping a bit, even more disappointed than wary.

Lord Voldemort relented a bit. He couldn't quite remember whether the saying was 'let them respect me so long as they fear me' or the other way around, but where he already _had_ devotion, it was a waste of energy to make fear his priority. "And what do you think of this 'compromise,' my own?"

Severus tilted his head thoughtfully. "It's not what I was trying for, sir," he admitted candidly. "I had, of course, hoped to replace the professor outright myself, and even for anyone else to have done it would create the opportunity for a great deal of strain in Dumbledore's school. A House under untested command would surely siphon his attention away from other matters, if it were impossible to put one of your own at its head."

"I hear a 'but' in your voice," Lord Voldemort observed, smiling.

"Yes, sir," Severus agreed, a little ruefully. "I would of course have done my best, but it would have been a _massive_ workload to take on all at once. I know the subject and the House well, naturally, but I don't think that's all there'd be to learn. It's not usually done to begin teaching and take on a Headship in the same year. I expect it would have been quite overwhelming. Simply being competent enough not to be fired without notice might have taken up all my time and thoughts."

"But you will have time, this way, will you not," the Dark Lord mused, "as well as access to the old fool, and the chance to… stand guard over the children of my faithful under his indifferent and partisan wardenship, and you will have the library of Hogwarts and its storerooms and equipment."

He smiled as he saw the realization leap into the black eyes and take light there. "Not being a student," Severus said, mouth going soft with fascination and greed, "there would be, to me, no Restricted Section." He wrenched his mind back, with visible effort, from this tempting prospect (Lord Voldemort had to make his own effort not to laugh fondly at this very familiar difficulty), to say cautiously, "I can't answer for how _much_ time I'll have, sir. Slughorn is _absolutely sure_ to pass along as much of his scut-work to me as he can get away with, and considering that the excuse for my presence will be that I'm in training to possibly replace him next year, everyone will think him right to do so. But it will certainly be more time than I'd have had under the original plan."

He looked wry, and added, "Probably less than a DADA teacher would have, sir, between ingredient preparation and clean-up and the amount of written work potions classes need, but on the other hand, I won't be responsible for the curriculum."

Lord Voldemort rolled his eyes a little, but didn't punish Severus for being tedious and providing unwanted detail. Severus was meant to be thinking things through carefully, as he was _not_ supposed to be indulging his weakness for the ready quip. "Then perhaps, my own, you may fulfill both of my plans for you. We shall see. But what are these conditions?"

"He requires me to fill the remaining time before term starts with research, my Lord," Severus said seriously.

"What research is this?"

"Onefold, sir. First—"

"You mean twofold."

Severus paused. With what the Dark Lord could see was a _massive_ effort at diplomacy, he said carefully, "Of course my Lord uses the term as it is widely understood and is therefore linguistically, if not mathematically, correct."

Lord Voldemort rolled his eyes much more obviously, but at least the little pedant had tried. He droned, "Continue, Severus. First?"

"Well, sir, both the requirements are meant to be a preparation for next year. First, he thinks there isn't much point in a new teacher if the curriculum isn't also updated and," Severus's eyes flashed indignantly, "I must say that I agree. Slughorn's still using a book that came out in the twenties, and it hasn't had a new edition since 1950 and doesn't even _dip_ into the interdisciplinary—"

"Severus…"

Severus's hands spasmed in continued indignation, but he took a hard breath and got to the point. Lord Voldemort forebore to applaud. "He wants, as I say, an updated curriculum for next year, and to that purpose he wants me to interview other professors and practitioners."

"I see," said the Dark Lord slowly. Severus had just been in contact with most of the British 'practitioners' of any consequence, or who thought themselves of any consequence, which almost certainly meant that Dumbledore had just given Severus leave to go spend time with well-connected Europeans.

Both potentially a gold mine and a potential disaster, but he doubted the boy would need much encouragement to take his more polished friend and fellow-servant with him. And giving the young Rosier snot a mission would relieve Lord Voldemort of the tedium of fending off his father. Darius _would_ keep on complaining that his boy wasn't being given any chances to show his mettle, but Lord Voldemort would sooner have relied on a snail to accomplish any work he cared about. At least snails were load-bearing. "And the second?"

"Well, sir," Severus said uncomfortably, "while I do have my Mastery in Potions from the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers, er. To put it plainly, it's fairly common knowledge among those who know anything about potions that all a MESoP mastery means about a brewer these days is that he can follow a recipe and is either reasonably well-funded or well-connected. To take over a professorship at Hogwarts at my age and be taken even remotely seriously by the parents who matter, I'd need to be better-credentialed than that."

"And so?"

Severus sighed. "I'd need to have my Braumeistery from the International Association of Master Brewers."

He frowned at the glum look, and asked warningly, "And is that so impossible, Severus?"

"I—hm. Perhaps not," Severus said, getting that judicious look again after the initial jolt of alarm. "It hasn't been possible to get away to do it, but I suppose I could, now, unless the last leg of my research goes wrong. I've got most of what I need from working at the Wolfsbane lab; I just need some corroboratory data on vampires, and to finish and submit the write-up in time for IAMB to peck it to pieces by next summer. I don't need anything on zombies because they can be re-humanized, and I don't need inferii because they aren't sentient and should really be counted as the animated-dead rather than as humanity permanently afflicted with a viral curse and categorized as undead for lack of a better term."

Lord Voldemort didn't want to know. He sought immortality: the undead were useful to him only as minions. "So what will you, in fact, have to do, _practically_ speaking," he pressed wearily.

"Oh!" Severus jumped a bit, sheepishly. And yet, the Dark Lord mused, he still wasn't as bad as Rookwood. "Well, the most important thing, obviously, will be the vampire research, so I'll probably prioritize speaking with the Dumstrang professors, although of course France is on the way geographically. And then, depending on how long it takes to gather my data or whether I have reasonable international floo access while in the Schwartzwald area, I've started a list of brewers and educators to talk technique with."

The Dark Lord tapped his fingers meditatively on the knee of his black robes. "Do you intend to go alone?" he inquired, in one of his lighter and more dangerous tones.

More than bright enough to hear the warning in his voice, Severus's eyes widened a bit, and skittered briefly, looking for an out without enough information to seek one properly. Which proved the Dark Lord had been right not to give it to him: it was difficult for his followers to tell him only what they thought he wanted to hear, if they didn't know what that was.

Severus settled on, "Is it required of me? It had occurred to me that Rosier's family would welcome the opportunity for him to paint such forest-scapes and expand their clientele, and, er, I thought it wouldn't be the best idea to go without some safeguard against…" he shrugged helplessly, "me talking to people."

Lord Voldemort gave his servant a dry _you said it, I didn't_ look, and said, "It is indeed time that the renowned Rosier talent for making friends was exercised more widely. Yes, my own, I think this will all serve very well. And I shall add one small chore to your list, as well."

Severus tried to look game and eager and succeeded mostly in looking appropriately apprehensive. "Yes, sir?"

"One more interview, Severus. In pursuit of knowledge. One more new friend—or rather, a very old friend. The very, very old friend of our mutual… friend."

It took Severus a moment to work that one out, and then another to stick his eyes back in his head, but he pleased Lord Voldemort by understanding that he was not to bother his master by asking how the impossible was to be done and that he was, rather, to simply work out how to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, what Severus was actually regretting up there was agreeing with/riffing of Tom's word and clapping the 'lowly' label on perfectly respectable service work, let alone genuinely professional jobs like nurse and librarian. Blood treachery is one thing (and, as a half-blood, impossible for him, in his opinion), but to lapse into class treachery just for the sake of teh snark is just embarrassing.
> 
> (While, of course, being perfectly acceptable if done for strategic reasons and out of necessity.)


	10. Nelson, Lancashire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus critiques graffiti, attempts Taoism, and predicts the future, and Harry takes aim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : biological truthfulness about babies, opinions about gender roles, passive-aggressive behavior. Snape vs. Potter, round 2.

“Oh, dear god,” the deep voice rang out behind them in slow horror. “What did you maniacs do to our park?”

“Isn’t it lovely?” Lily beamed, getting up to pull the staring Snape down far enough to be kissed on the cheek. Remus settled for taking one hand away from where he was idly pushing the pram back and forth to wave.

“It is not,” Snape retorted. “It looks like every bad cliché of flower children on acid let loose in a tie-dye factory a three-year-old armed with sidewalk chalk could aimlessly scribble on a rainy afternoon.”

Although he had not been previously aware of the existence of such a cliché, and didn’t especially think that such a convoluted one would survive even if it held up under even the most casual examination, Remus made a point of only arguing with Snape when there was half a chance it would be worth it. Which it almost certainly wasn’t, since on this occasion Snape wasn’t so much glancing disdainfully all around as sneaking a hopeful peek at whether he’d made Lily smile.

“We think it cheers up the old place no end,” she said firmly. “Anyway, I don’t know why you’re acting so surprised. Didn’t Rosier show you the picture?”

“I can only presume he decided to spare me.”

“He came back and helped.”

“You’re lying,” Snape returned without bothering to think about it. “He came, he saw, he gave it up as a bad job and decided I must never know.”

“…He did that butterfly,” Lily said in a sort of it’s-a-fair-cop sheepish tone, pointing at a thing that Remus had thought was either an abstract, vines twining through a rusted metal crown, or some kind of friendly cartoon sea monster. Maybe Nessie, cheerfully waving a webbed flipper for the tourists as she jammed their cameras. It had entirely taken over the slide.

Snape stared at it. Eventually, he decided, “I suppose he decided that’s why I must never know,” but now he looked amused. “It’s a bit Last Unicorn Crunched Up Azathoth For Elevenses With Her Hay And Clover By Accident, isn’t it? Did he _say_ it was a butterfly?”

Lily tilted her head consideringly. “Now that you mention it, I’m not sure he did.”

Even before the potions-based attack on his own curse had started to look like it might not go the distance, Remus had been building up a background in the Egyptian magical mindset. After all, they were rather specialized in curse-breaking as well as curses, what with all the archaeology and tomb-raiding that went on over there. He was almost sure that Azathoth was not any variant of Thoth he’d ever heard of.

Besides, Thoth was a patron deity of both magic and writing.  Even when Remus felt that a particularly strict god of justice might not consider that he, Remus, had done quite everything that perhaps he ought to have over the course of his life thus far, he still felt more of an affinity for the ibis-headed god than a terror of him.  His name certainly didn’t make the hair rise on the back of Remus’s neck—although the prospect of trying to remember how to spell the _Djehuty_ variants while trying to unlock some thousand-year-old curse before its plague got loose did not please.

Snape shook his head, looking as if he were biting back a few comments that weren’t quite as acid as he wished they were. “Well. As you can see, I received your message. What is it?”

“You tell me, Sev,” Lily replied. “I just thought I’d keep Remus company when _he_ got _your_ note, and I thought it’d be nice to meet somewhere we’ve all been.”

“…Ah.” He glanced over at Remus and the pram, then favored her with a slow quirk of a half-smile that, to Remus’s surprise, actually looked like pleasure and approval. “Keeping everything friendly?”

“Well, we are all friends,” Lily said, being firm again.

“Lupin and I are not friends,” he said, equally firm but without malice, and walked over. “Lupin,” he said briskly and, in the same tone, peering into the pram, “Winston.”

“His name is Harry,” Remus said mildly.

Snape slid him that curling, dismissive look that said _you have no understanding but it’s of no account since you aren’t either._ Then, sitting down on the other side of the pram from Remus on the bench, he settled into the cool, dispassionate, professional, rather tired-of-everything face that Remus had got used to from the Snape who was continually droning at him to get out of his office.

It wasn’t quite the same face, though. Usually Snape was impatient and irritated with him under it. Now Remus was chilled, thinking he saw just a trace of sympathy. Or even apology. And a certain hesitation. He braced himself, or did his best to, and asked, “What did you want to talk to me about, Severus?”

Well, maybe it wasn’t _too_ bad, because Snape reacted to his given name with his usual annoyed twitch. Someday maybe he’d react like a normal person to the friendly gesture, which would be better, but until then Remus would settle for driving him batty.

He got over it more quickly than usual, though, which was, in turn, a bad sign. It usually was, when Snape thought anything was more important than how angry he was, or even how cross. “I thought it right to tell you myself,” he began, bluntly flat-eyed.

“The grant’s been cut,” Remus interrupted him, on the premise that maybe it wouldn’t be so painful if he said it himself instead of hearing it. Nope.

But Snape gave a sardonic little sigh with a grimace that, again, was terrifyingly almost-sympathetic, and said, “It’s not quite that bad yet, although I still wouldn’t count on any soufflés from the eggs in that basket.”

“Teach your grandmother to suck them,” Remus retorted pessimistically.

With an odd, amused look, Snape mused, “Maybe I will.” He turned his attention back to Remus. “No, the committee hasn’t decided yet. What I have to tell you is that I’m out.”

Remus rather wished that being a werewolf worked the way Sirius had originally thought (hoped) it had, so that when he got angry his eyes flashed gold and a growl rumbled in his throat or something.

No, that was a bad thing to hope, because Severus was the _last person on earth_ he wanted to threaten with the wolf. Ever. Never again.

It was just, knowing what blood and fury was in him sometimes made him feel so _helpless_ at times like this. Especially since he didn’t want to let it out, ever, at all. He didn’t. The temptation of flashing a fang would never, ever be worth the quiet damage it would do.

As always, he kept a firm hold on himself, only his hands clenching so that the pram stilled. “Why is that, Severus?” he asked, as pleasantly as he could manage.

Snape gave him a _my egg-sucking grandmother could do that better_ look.  Even after he’d already delivered the worst, it made Remus feel less angry than as if the world would still go on. “Among other reasons, someone with influence wants me out. Which means the project has a much better chance of remaining funded if I’m off it. They might withdraw their opposition if I leave.”

“Of course,” Remus said. “You’re certainly not just giving up.”

Snape looked at him in pure contempt. “You flash-in-the-pan enchanters,” he sneered. “Spell a boot to kick and on to the next clever little notion. Do you know what patience is? Do you know the meaning of research? In two years I’ve watched more progress being made—helped make it—than has been made in the centuries since the condition first revealed itself. No one was able to _begin to affect it_ before Belby. You think this is a surrender to the idea that it’s unshiftable because I think it’s going _too slowly?_ The pace is _miraculous._ ”

Under the drill of those eyes’ full and irate attention, Remus couldn’t help but lean back a bit, although he did manage to keep his chin safely down after the initial throat-tightening quiver.  The muscles behind his eyebrows moved back, though, and he could almost feel his ears lowering along with his shoulders.  

The playground was on flat and scrubby ground, with nothing to bounce an echo off.  Snape’s voice, that got so quiet when he was angry, had started to ring anyway.  “This is the philosopher’s stone, Lupin, this is Mithridates’ Shield, this is the cure for cancer and the common cold, this is the _Sangreal_ of medical brewery and liquid cursebreaking. It’s the kind of problem any real brewer would be _thrilled_ to spend his life working on, but if the best thing I can do for it is to, at least for a time, walk away, _I will walk away._ ”

“…That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Lily complained. She’d picked Harry up while Snape was talking, and was cuddling him while he drooled.

Snape sighed, all his fierce conviction punctured, and looked at her with a _you break me, why do I put up with this, oh right, I remember, but I’m sure I’d be less tired if I didn’t_ expression. “There’s news.”

“But everything I heard says you’re driving most of the progress, now that Belby’s got too high-profile to be tied to just doing actual research in only one project,” Remus parried that ‘best thing’ nonsense.

Snape pursed his lips, eying him. “If you’re trying flattery, don’t bother, there’s no point in it, it’s settled. As a matter of fact, what you say you’ve heard happens to be true. Patil’s a reasonably competent lab hand, but it’s been some time since he decided he wasn’t coming up with good ideas and was of more use keeping the minutia of the lab running smoothly and in good order than in forcing creativity when it wasn’t flowing. Which is, as a matter of fact, of great use, which is why Belby kept him on. However, that need not concern you overmuch.”

“Because you think it’s going to be shut down whatever you do,” Remus said heavily.

Snape paused, and admitted, as heavily, “I’m afraid I do. But that’s not what I mean, in fact.”

Remus looked at him skeptically, but Lily made an inquisitive noise.

Predictably, it was to her that Snape addressed himself. “If I’m wrong about the grant, as I hope I am, I won’t be leaving the lab without a font of new ideas. Lovegood isn’t as meticulous about exhausting avenues of research once embarked on as I could wish, but she’s not afraid to come at a problem from angles no one has ever dreamed of before.” He paused, and added dryly, “Even while on hallucinogens.”

Remus reflected that the difference between Sirius and Snape was that Sirius, instead of making that last aside, would have nudged him and grinned, _Get it? Em-BARKED on,_ because he would have done it on purpose to be chummy. Whereas with Snape there was absolutely no way of telling whether it had been a buried dig or just the word he’d thought was appropriate and would correctly convey his meaning.

Either way he had a headache, but at least with Snape it was justified.

“But who’s forcing you out?” Lily asked. Her frown was mostly worried, but it had the beginnings of indignation in it as she bounced Harry, who mostly looked pleasantly dazed.

“Someone who can. Don’t worry about it,” Snape said shortly.

“But Sev—”

“I didn’t tell you so you could make waves,” he said, even more shortly. “Leave it.”

Remus thought, incredulously, _Make waves?_ Lily wasn’t exactly some shrinking violet. She was perfectly happy about going up to anyone to earnestly express a dissenting view. That wasn’t a prospect that scared her. It had never particularly seemed to scare Snape, either, as far as Remus could tell, so Remus doubted he was projecting.

No, Lily only got stressed about the prospect of serious arguments with three people. She clearly wasn’t on speaking terms with her sister, since her card to Petunia with a picture of her, James and Harry had shown up again in the post with ‘Return to Sender’ on it in Dursley’s handwriting. And Snape obviously wasn’t forcing himself out of his own job.

The third person Lily didn’t enjoy having a real fight with (bickering was obviously another matter entirely) was from an influential family and hated Snape a lot. He was also having a passive-aggressive sort of fight with Lily over Snape already, which he was handling badly because he only knew how to do aggressive-aggressive and sneaky-aggressive.

But Remus couldn’t _believe_ James would do that to him. James had been right there when they’d thought Sirius had used Remus to get at Snape. James knew how wretched that had been, even after they hadn’t had to be afraid that all their lives had been ruined by Sirius’s drunken, flap-mouthed idiocy anymore. And James wouldn’t muck about with Remus’s _cure._

But James never would admit Snape was very bright, either, any more than Sirius would. He might not think it was much of a risk or a sacrifice, if he got really worked up.

No. He wouldn’t do that to Remus. He _wouldn’t._

Snape and Lily were looking at him.

He stretched a smile of bland skepticism over the sick roiling in his chest and stomach and asked, “Is this ‘turn the other cheek,’ Severus, or ‘attachment is the root of suffering’?”

Snape gave him another one of those _I dislike you so very much_ looks, and snapped, “Best to be like water, which benefits the ten thousand things and does not contend. Nothing in the world is as soft and weak as water, but when attacking the hard and strong, nothing can conquer so easily.”

Remus and Lily both stared at him, and looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

“Did he really,” Lily giggled, “did he _really_ just say ‘I go with the flow?’”

“Sort of almost shouted it,” Remus snorgled, because he was trying not to but Snape’s _yes, fine, all right, I HATE YOU BOTH grr snarl grump_ face was making it very, very hard.

“Your child’s just soiled his nappy,” Snape informed Lily crabbily, arms winched in across his chest like a cross, moss-colored spider god.

“If you’re going to resort to drastic measures to change the subject,” Lily scolded him, still giggling, “you should try not to be completely ridiculous. You couldn’t possibly—”

She was cut off as Harry screwed up his face and started to wail like Moaning Myrtle in an echo chamber.

“I could absolutely,” Snape said drily, talking over the screaming. “They make a face. Just because _your_ parents didn’t take _you_ to work.”

Lily tilted her head sweetly, trying to bounce Harry and get her wand out at the same time.  It didn’t go well.  Snape was giving her a _how many hands do you think you have and would you want to be jostled with full pants_ sort of look, but if he had any idea what she wanted to do with her wand, he didn’t move to help. “Well,” she said with obviously false consideration, “you know, Sev, Jamie’s more used to learning things from Remus than from me, and if _you_ taught Remus, it’d almost be like James owed you one, wouldn’t it?”

“Specious and sophomoric,” Snape said, still dry. “If you haven’t got it down yourself yet, you’ve only to say.”

“Will _somebody_ please do _something?”_ Remus begged, fingers in his ears.

“We are doing something,” Snape said composedly. “We’re teaching him that when he looks for help and attention, adults will give it to him but without immediately dropping everything in his favor every time, and that his dissatisfaction will be attended to but is no cause for panic. Now _you_ do something and lay out the necessaries.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Lily asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s already no secret what Potter’s like around him,” Snape said in tones of dire foreboding. “I know the midwives, you know, courtesy of Narcissa being a hypochondriac by proxy—please avoid that if at all possible, incidentally—and by all accounts the man was diving at his every digit like it was a snitch. They thought there’d be cheek-pinching. It’s not natural for a boy’s da to coo at him like a maiden aunt. You’re going to have work yourself to the bone to see he’s not spoiled rotten, and he’ll hate you for it for whole years at a time.”

“Thank you Sookie Sunshine,” Lily returned, rubbing Harry’s back soothingly, with a droll air of never having expected anything else.

“Someone’s already practiced in controlling his language around der kinder, I see,” remarked Remus, pulling things more or less at random out of the giant bag Lily had balanced over the wheels of the pram. He frowned at the large stuffed animal and put it back, not seeing any particular need for purple foxes during the changing process.

“Have you started a swearing box for Black yet?” Snape asked, amused, laying out about a third of the things Remus had pulled out into a setup that looked vaguely familiar. Actually, when Sirius used foul language, Remus always got the feeling he was doing it, if not exactly self-consciously, than at least on purpose.  It being cruel to tell a rebel he was being hopeless and rather cute, though, Remus didn’t.

“I never understood the point of that,” he said as Lily put the squirming, shrieking baby down on a blanket he thought he was supposed to call a blankie but didn’t want to. “If the money goes to something everyone wants, then what’s the incentive not to swear?”

“Yes, Lupin,” Snape said, with over-exaggerated kindness, “but what you are attempting to apply to human behavior there is called _logic._ ”

“Whatever was I thinking,” Remus returned, stifling a smile.

“I can’t imagine, but stop thinking it and pay attention.”

When the disgusting lesson was complete and Harry was dry and content again (and Snape had rather disappointed Remus by deftly turning Harry’s hips sideways by the ankles in time to just avoid a shot of wee. He’d appeared to take it personally anyway), Snape peremptorily set Remus to exercising Harry’s limbs for him and drew Lily away a little distance.

As a dutiful Marauder, Remus took out his wand in the lee of his body and bettered his hearing. Snape must not have wanted to alarm Lily by showing he felt a need for tight security, since he didn’t put up his buzzing spell, so that was enough to let Remus listen.

“…Be going away for a while,” Snape was saying in a low voice.

“How long is a while?” Lily asked worriedly.

“Just the rest of the summer,” he assured her. “But I’m glad you came today; I would have had to contact you anyway, before we left.”

“Well, I should hope so!” she said indignantly.

Snape paused. His shoulders dropped a little, relaxing, his face melting warmer and friendlier. “…Well, all right,” he agreed, very nearly smiling, “but I needed to tell you a few things, as well.”

Lily leaned against a tree, stretching a little, and commented, “You never really appreciate not having a backache until you’ve had one for months at a time.”

Remus thought he wouldn’t mind trading his problem to have an ache for a while and be done, personally.

Snape considered. “I suppose it’s like breaking something before school,” he posited, quite matter of fact. “Or over the summer.”

Her face went tight. “I suppose it might be. Go on, then.”

He slipped her a quicksilver flash of a smile, there and gone again, barely there in the first place. “First off, are you taking the boy around to show him off to your old neighbors up around here?”

“Oh,” she blinked. “I suppose I should, shouldn’t I…”

He rolled his eyes. “Actually, you shouldn’t, what with his being the child of two wizards who live in the wizarding world, and you shouldn’t show him around to your parents’ neighbors by their year-‘round house, either. Statute, Lils. If it’s not too late to stop your mother bragging, you ought to, but I expect it is.”

“Well, I can try,” she said, frowning, obviously hating the idea and looking a bit hurt about it.

“Fewer know, safer they are?” he said pointedly, and Lily went a bit white for some reason. Bit of an overreaction, in Remus’s opinion.  Snape had a point, certainly, but even if Lily was so un-circumspect as to bring the Obliviators down on her neighbors, she’d just get a fine she and James could more than afford and they’d just lose an hour or so, which was confusing but not in the least dangerous. “But what I wanted to say was, if you end up talking to anyone around this way, when you come back you’ve heard that Da’s got ugly again. Do you understand?”

“He has?” she demanded, her spine snapping straight. “Does your mum need—”

“You’ve _heard_ he has,” Snape stressed, sighing. “And you can say truthfully that you have because you are, right now, hearing it, from me.”

“…Oh,” she said dubiously.

“Yes, I know, it’s rotten,” he said in a depressed agreeing tone.  “To be called away without notice and not come back at once in a fury with apologies, I needed an excuse.  A really drastic one.”  

Lily looked guilty, and Snape, with a slightly gallant air that made Remus purse skeptical lips, affected not to notice.  He was going to have to ask her if James knew about this, too.  Except he couldn’t, because he wasn’t supposed to have heard it, he was just eavesdropping, which Lily would take a Very Dim View of, so he _couldn’t_ get in the middle of this one.

If there was a nagging voice in the back of his head that said that Snape hadn’t stopped him from eavesdropping, which was practically an invitation, and wasn’t that interesting, and didn’t it mean he _was_ supposed to have heard it and _could_ ask her if James knew and _shouldn’t_ so completely avoid the outskirts of this fight they were having, since he _was_ being involved in it—well, if there was, then Remus, with a vaguely unhappy feeling he was well-practiced in ignoring and never named, sat on it.

“I know they’d like to see you, though,” Snape went on. Going sardonic again, “Not me, at the moment, but certainly you.”

“Well, you can hardly blame them, and, er, I hope—”

“I don’t. Second…” Snape’s shoulders tightened again. “Lils, if people you’d rather not talk to start trying to make nice with you while I’m not around to discuss it with, will you _please_ stall for time and not just punch them in the face?”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I have no idea. Not with any specificity. Just… the foghorn-like nature of Slughorn’s opinion of your character and talents may have a great deal to do with his desire to show how prejudiced he isn’t—“

Lily scowled, and if she wasn’t remembering what he’d called her under the beech tree, if he wasn’t, Remus was.

Snape held up a quelling hand. “But it’s also very clear to everyone that the opinion is perfectly sincere.  Knowing that and given recent events, certain parties you have no interest in associating with might well start preferring to court rather than ignore you. So _will you please not do anything irreversible while I’m away?”_

Eying him dubiously, she said, “…I’ll try…”

Snape took in a growling, groaning breath that clearly showed that he knew this was the best he was getting and felt it wasn’t good enough. “You have a mentor, _please_ use him?”

“Well, _that_ I can do,” she agreed.

“Oh, _good,_ ” he crooned in a mockery of satisfaction, sighing bitterly.

“I am, you know,” she said in a reminding-him tone. “Being all’s-well and all.”

On which subject, Remus _badly hoped_ that she was going to tell James about this little outing of theirs, at least, herself, whether he knew what she was already looking guilty about or not..  He really, _really_ didn’t want to be caught up in the outskirts of this fight again, let alone in the middle.

Snape sighed again. “Well, I suppose it’s something.”

“Poor Sev,” she smiled, not actually laughing at him sympathetically at him out loud. “It’s so inconvenient how other people use our own judgment, isn’t it?”

He made a face at her. “It’d be less inconvenient if you’d take the blindfold off and put down the scales, Madam Kettlepot. Nonetheless, vexing though you certainly are, there was one last thing.”

“Just one?”

“Just one,” he agreed, and looked uncomfortable. “Er.”

Her eyebrows flew up.

“I might… ask for your company for a few hours at some point in the next few weeks. It won’t be dangerous, but I won’t be able to tell you where, and I can’t tell you when in advance. But if you would come it would be… appreciated,” he said stiffly.

Suspiciously, she asked, “What’s this about?”

“I can’t tell you that, either. Just… it’s important.”

“But not dangerous.”

“No. Not dangerous. If I think it will be, I won’t ask you to come.”

Puzzled, she shrugged. “All right then. How will I know?”

“I’ll owl or floo you a portkey. If it’s by owl it’ll be with a letter, with the time and activation phrase in lemon juice. If the activation phrase isn’t in the Dancing Men, don’t use it.”

“Sev, aren’t you being a bit eleven?” she asked affectionately.

With a bit of a wicked glint, he admitted, “It’s possible, but after seeing what Evan perpetrated on that slide, I badly want to find out what he’ll do with a graphic cipher and a pot of invisible ink. Don’t you?”

“Good effort,” Remus praised Harry, wiping a trail of drool off his chin with a clean nappy, “and a kind thought, but that isn’t lemon juice and I think it best for everyone involved if you let the cranky man use his own, all things considered.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes and Credits** :  
> My copy of the Tao Te Ching was translated by Addis and Lombardo. It's not a standard translation, but it's my favorite. Severus has squashed together two bits of it.
> 
> Azathoth belongs to H.P. Lovecraft, who can have it.
> 
> The Last Unicorn is by Peter S. Beagle, and the movie was done by the same animation studio who did the _original_ Hobbit movie. Which was very good, they both were, if done in a quite different way and for a different audience than the recent LoTR films. The same does not hold true for the animation studio's attempt at LoTR, which was crap.
> 
> The Sangreal is another word for the Holy Grail—san implying holy, although _sang_ says we're talking about blood, just ask Dan Brown.
> 
> Mithridates' Shield is mine, but it was inspired by A. E. Housman's _A Shropshire Lad_. If it sounds this-story-familiar, that's because Severus and his labmates not only mentioned it but quoted the relevant part of the poem in [Valley I:chapter 36.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/2881747)
> 
>  _The Adventure of the Dancing Men_ is, of course, a Sherlock Holmes story. Severus's reasoning for using this cipher (despite Lily's opinion that he's reverting to scraped knees and scrumped apples) is that, as a simple substitution cipher, it was made to be simple enough that Doyle's readers had a shot at cracking it once they knew what was going on, and enough letters were provided by the story to make it crackable by the most dunderheaded Gryffindor who knew what to look for (barring dyslexia etc). While, on the other hand, to those who don't know what it is, it looks as much like a doodle as a code, which makes it safer than anything that looks like language. Or, at least, anything without enough magical protection to raise flags, or that hadn't been put through ENIGMA.


	11. The Green Lion, Amesbury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two rabbity li'l bunnies walk into a bar… and one, get him out his safe ol' burrow, turn out he named Br'er.
> 
> Even worse, the other one knows about CCTV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** for actualfacts Death Eaters, dysfunctional families, realistic assessments of potential muggle-wizard intranational relations... and SLYTHERIN!
> 
>  **Summary notes** : If you don't know wtf that style was about or who Bre'r Rabbit is, but you don't hate Slytherin, you should probably go find out about one of the great folkloric Tricksters who was probably Bugs Bunny's granddaddy or uncle or something or possibly his own self before he bleached and changed his accent to avoid looking immortal. Even if the stories are in what is today a somewhat politically charged dialect. 
> 
> **HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SEV!**  
>  And for your birthday, not only will I post early... (drumroll) ...I will torture someone else!
> 
>  **But** because we must torture our lad just a little bit on his birthday, anyone remember when we used to do Q &A? Let's try that again, at least this once. Like the first time, the theme is The Newlywed Game: ask a character a question about their partner or their friend (and find out how wrong said friend thinks they are).
> 
> Got new questions? Important questions? Ridiculous questions? Never got to ask a question because you started reading after that stopped? Were too shy/lurkerish to ask a question but would actually rather like to? Want to see if they have new answers now things have changed for them? They are agog!
> 
> (Actually, some of them are hiding behind the sofa. But these sensible people have enthusiastic and mildly sadistic SOs, so that's ok.)

"Oh, come on," Reg protested. "All right, I know your dad's a bit… hard, but he just wants what he thinks is best for you. It's not his fault he's, er, not very imaginative, is it?"

His companion rolled his eyes. "No, Reg, _your mum_ just wants what she thinks is best for you, and _she's_ not very imaginative."

Reg sort of wanted to give a very long list of examples to prove how wrong that was, but since he knew perfectly well that his old yearmate, in saying Mother wasn't imaginative, hadn't been talking about Disciplinary Ideas That Might Work On Sirius, all it would prove was that Reg had been spending too much time with Severus. Of course, since his friend had been a Ravenclaw, he might not judge Reg too much for it or even think he ought to mind being corrected if it meant he learned something, but still, embarrassing. And not something he should know anyway.

" _My_ father wants what's best for his career," he concluded, not noticing Reg's you're-off-track twitch, with a chuckle that was trying to be airy and didn't come close.

And because Reg had spent too much time at school with _Evan and Narcissa_ and Spike, he said, a bit apologetically, "Um, if you were trying to pretend that was a joke, it still came out sort of bitter, Barty."

Then he had to smile, because that won him a cockeyed _are you kidding me_ look that he hadn't thought to miss in years. It was the kind he and Evvie and Cissa had got so often from Spike at the start, before he'd _been_ Spike, in the winter and spring of Reggie's first year when Getting Snape Respectable Enough To Be Seen With had first started to be a family project.

Severus had largely been on board with it. In fact, when it wasn't too close to exams he could usually be convinced to read out one's textbooks in exchange for having his accent corrected while he did it. But every so often they'd run into something like Narcissa telling him to bow when he thought he was supposed to shake hands, or Evan telling him he'd been tying his laces like a girl (he'd tried, in a blindingly obvious attempt to save face, to convince Narcissa to take offense at the suggestion that it was a bad thing, but she'd told him not to be silly, it was breaking established rules that everyone else knew about for no better reason than ignorance that was the bad thing, and he'd shut up for once, worryingly thoughtful), or absolutely everyone insisting they'd never heard of his precious 'Oh-ee-dee,' and he'd be absolutely sure they were putting him on.

Barty's look, though, came with a distinct flavor of _what is wrong with you,_ so Reg explained, "Well, if you want people to _believe_ you. I mean, if you sound bitter they'll think you're complaining, and then they'll think you're exaggerating."

"Reggie," Barty said, in a tone of strained patience. "I'm not going to try to undermine the head of the DMLE just because he happens to be my father the complete wanker."

"Well, okay," Reg said, "but shouldn't you know that kind of thing if you're going to be an Auror?" It was as close as he meant to come to asking if Barty was deliberately sabotaging his own training.

He could quite see both why Barty's father wanted his son in a profession that had a really good combination of cachet, respectability, the potential for glory, and, at the higher levels, access to not just anyone they wanted but very nearly any records. He could see why Voldemort wanted someone who'd been working with Bella long enough to either catch fanatical loyalty or get too scared to think about backing out to infiltrate the MLE, too, especially when that someone had the family ties to get in without anyone blinking at it. But he did rather wonder about why Barty had cooperated with Mr. Crouch, since he'd already been in training when Voldemort had chosen to make it known to him how pleased at Barty's position the wizard was, and that had been long before he'd swapped Barty in for Reg in Bella's, er, team.

He would have understood Barty's wanting to work in the Department of Mysteries, or at St. Mungo's in a research capacity like Spike. 'Auror' didn't say 'Barty' to him. Okay, Barty wasn't as anxious as Reg knew himself to be when his father wasn't involved, but Auror was the kind of job that Gryffs who liked to jump out at people got enthusiastic about. And, okay, according to Bella Barty was doing a better job for her than he had (with the implication that a sick puffskein would also have done better. Reg hadn't said it would have had to be a very sick puffskein indeed, and since she'd just kept sneering at him and hadn't got angry or offended, he must have kept the thought out of his eyes, too), but surely turning out to be good at violence didn't mean you'd always secretly wanted to seek out confrontations?

"Well, no one but you seems to think so, Reggie," Barty said, giving him a _sometimes I really wonder about you_ eyebrow.

Reg gave him one back. "And when was the last time there were any Slytherin Aurors to even think _about_ it?" Not bothering to make Barty answer that one, he asked, "But what I really want to know is, okay, _that's_ not a good reason to undermine the head of the DMLE, but haven't you got one?"

"…Have I?"

"We don't exactly want someone competent in that office, do we? Not right now."

"Well, I'm glad to hear you say 'we,' anyway," Barty said sardonically. "Since _we_ haven't seen much of you lately."

"I don't know what you've been told," Reg replied, leaning back and sipping his butterbeer, "but since the whole reason you're part of that 'we' in the first place was to free me up to do other things, don't you think that's only natural?"

Barty reared back, stung.

"Oh, well," Reg kind-of-backtracked at once in a placating sort of way, pecking order established, "I don't mean 'we' generally, you understand, just, you know, what you meant about seeing much of me. It was just the family there until he wanted me to do something else, and then he thought of you."

Barty's dishwater-brown eyes went round. "He thought of me, himself?"

Reggie confirmed this, as it was true, and drank his butterbeer with a tired sort of feeling instead of spoiling Barty's pleasure. It was mean and small, but if Barty only felt honored about helping Bella make people disappear, if it wasn't hurting him and making him sick, then it wasn't hurting him. Was it? And if he wanted it, he'd fight to keep it, and then maybe Reg wouldn't have to go back.

And if he felt just a little bit more entitled to think that way than he had before he'd heard the news from Dye-Urn… well, feeling differently wouldn't do him any good. Or, actually, anyone else: he _had_ to look out for himself, now.

After he thought Barty had silently cuddled the thought of being personally chosen for long enough, though, he asked, "Are you having trouble keeping up with Bella? It's, er, not for everyone."

He thought for a split second that he could feel the hungry silk of his red scarf slipping away from his fingers again, hear the ghost of a desperate, terrified gurgle, smell things he didn't want to. But the scarf was, of course, at home, in his drawer, in a very secure box he'd transfigured into a set of rather dully ugly winter socks. He ought to put it in his vault, since Bella would take it amiss if he burned it.

Barty shrugged. "It does take some getting used to," he admitted, "but, well, you didn't take Muggle Studies, did you?"

"I thought about it," Reg said. "Bella was pro-Dominance in those days, so I thought we ought to know about them. And I had this moment of insanity where I felt like somebody ought to be responsible for Gildy not failing out of school."

Barty left that one alone, for which Reg, in retrospect, was rather grateful. "Well, half of Auror training is about keeping alert, but they've already got ways to do it without being at the place they want to look at, or when they want to look at it, and they keep _tinkering._ And they've got these… sort of like libraries, I don't know how to describe it, but it's giving them _really good memories._ I mean, not each person, and not exactly like a penseive, but like a _really_ efficient library where people can find what they're looking for really fast. And not whole books or scrolls they have to look through, just one piece of information at a time, or lists of things like 'residents of Kent.' You ask your crazy friend if he knows about video cameras and computers and databases."

Reg frowned. "Bast didn't take Muggle Studies either."

Barty rolled his eyes again. "I meant _Snape,_ " he said, in a tone that added, _obviously._

Regulus was heartily glad that Barty was a Ravenclaw, because he could count on one hand the number of Slytherins he knew who wouldn't have already been subtly blackmailing him with the implication that his assumption would get back to Rabastan, whether or not they had any intention of following through or even meant him to seriously think they did. None of the ones who wouldn't had a twentieth of Barty's brains.

He _should_ have remembered that people who didn't know Rabastan and Gilderoy really, really well did think Spike was his craziest friend, but he couldn't stop remembering what Bast had said he'd done to get cursed and earn his public punishment, or that Bast had clearly only been giving lip service to the notion that he'd made any mistakes at all and not just been unlucky.

Shaking off the chills that story had given him, and the further chills he'd had at realizing he wasn't tough enough even after all those nights with Bella and her in-laws that his friends couldn't still shock and sicken him, he shrugged, "If Snape's crazy, so's your Reflexes and Assessment master."

"Moody _is_ crazy," Barty assured him fervently. "He told six perfect strangers last week _alone_ they were going to blow their buttocks off if they were too cheap to spring for wand-holsters. Mostly stopped them in the lunch queue and spoiled their appetites."

"See? Even Snape's not _that_ crazy—he waits till he knows you to fuss." The example made him smile privately; Spike had had a decent hip-holster and wrist-sheath years before he'd been willing to spend his silver on anything else but books and potions stuff, and he'd gotten the wrist-sheath after Narcissa had already decided to be his friend and started nagging him about the importance of good shoes. And Narcissa could nag.

" _Anyway,_ see if he can tell you," Barty said, waving a hand to dismiss Severus. "My point is, it's quite possible that no one will have to break the Statute of Secrecy to make our world impossible to hide. I think we're okay for now, but they keep _tinkering,_ and we don't."

Reg stared at him. "You don't think we're going to have witch-burnings again?" he hoped.

"No-o-o," Barty said slowly. "As far as I can make out, they think magic is shiny and cute with unicorns you can ride and talking dragons that are more interested in snoozing on piles of gold than eating anything bigger than a sheep, and a witch that's real is someone who, I don't know, has some kind of weird relationship with crystals and probably eats a lot of yoghurt."

"A lot of what?"

"Don't ask."

Reggie looked at him dubiously, but kept getting the don't-ask look. He'd ask Spike about that, later, too. "What are you so worried about, then?"

Barty sighed. "Well, we're not like that, are we? —Well, Nanny Carrie is, a bit, or at least she'll talk your ear off about amulets if you give her half a chance."

And medieval chromamancy, Reg remembered now he mentioned it, which was probably why she'd thought Evan was so sweet.

"But mostly we're not, and even she'd hex anyone who came anywhere near her with yoghurt into a string of sausages. So once they work that out, they'll start reacting like muggles always do once they find out they have a wizard in the family, on a bigger scale, won't they? And, honestly, Reg, that doesn't always go half as badly as your lot thinks it does, but it's always _difficult."_

He hummed noncommittally.

"But that's not even the main thing," Barty said. "Even if there isn't some huge popular uprising… well, we're living in the same country, sometimes on the same streets, under the same queen, but not under the same government. And we don't have the same sets of laws. Really at all. According to Father, they have… a lot. Really a lot. Very complicated. And, you realize, they don't need as much security when they want to send a muggle to prison. You can just put a muggle behind bars and he's stuck, end of story, jobberknoll has sung. So they use that more than we do as a punishment, in a much more complicated way, and for much more minor things. If the wizarding world even got a _sniff_ of the idea that Muggle standards were going to be applied when it comes to who goes to Azkaban, that'd put us into open revolt all by itself, even if up to then everyone had been completely happy about the idea of coming together into a one-layer nation."

He looked at Reg meaningfully. Reg did his best to just look back with his best well-go-on face, because he wasn't going to be cowed by _Barty,_ or even Barty's awful ghost stories. His next sip of butterbeer was an uncomfortable one, though, and not really taken in appreciation of the flavor.

Sighing again, Barty explained, "It'd take a miracle to avoid war with them in our lifetime, Reggie. Your cousins are, er, a bit overenthusiastic, and I can't say I quite understand their attitude. It's no good being missish, though. Better to be ready when the time comes. _He_ understands that," he added, eyes glowing a little.

"Well, of course he does," Reg said with a bland little smile that Barty took, as intended, as complicity. Not that Reg had any idea whether Voldemort knew about the things Barty was talking about, specifically. But he was, by now, convinced that the man knew more about muggles and from closer-to than he was admitting. "Maybe he's going to be putting everyone through Bella's training, so we all get used to the idea, before he puts us to our real work," he proposed.

Barty made a _huh_ noise. "That's a thought," he said. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, because they started with us," he explained. "That is, you and me. No offense, but you're a Ravenclaw, and I _hated_ it, and Bella's known me long enough to know it'd be hard for me, and everyone tends to think Slytherin's the only House that's willing to get our hands dirty."

"Which is ridiculous," Barty said drily. "Huffies will do anything for a friend, Gryffs will do anything for a cause, and our House has been known to put out the occasional chickie who's a lot more interested in the experiment than the ethics of the experimental procedures."

Reg grinned at him. "You sound like Snape."

"Yeah, well, Snape probably thinks ghosts are dangerous," Barty rolled his eyes.

"Actually, he thinks Binns is destroying the world," Reg admitted, and they laughed. "Anyway, they probably think if Bella can get _us_ ready for combat, everyone else will be easy."

"I feel less honored now," Barty said drily.

"Well, you're probably impressing her more than I did, if that helps," he offered, going for disarming humbly honest flattery. "It's really not my thing."

"Maybe they're waiting for a model student to announce the initiative," mused Barty, eyes lighting.

"Could be," he allowed, and carefully didn't roll _his_ eyes, taking another sip of butterbeer instead. The muggles, he reminded himself, were going to die anyway: there was no point in feeling badly about making Barty more enthusiastic. "Listen, talking of Bella, she's a little disgusted with me since, you know, so I didn't want to ask her myself, but something occurred to me and now I'm worried about him."

Barty blinked. "Well, she doesn't _like_ Snape," he said judiciously, "but I haven't heard her rant about him especially, lately, if that's what you want to know."

"No," he explained with emphasis, "I'm worried about _Him._ "

" _Oh!_ " Worried now, too, "Why?"

"Well, I was talking to Evan, and it occurred to me to wonder whether he's had a portrait done. I mean, I've never heard of one, have you? And no one knows who his family is. So we really have no idea if he's taken care of, in case something happens, do we?"

Looking surprised, Barty agreed, "I suppose not. But I'm sure he does, Reg. There isn't a pureblood mother alive—"

"I don't think he has," Reg said flatly. "I've been thinking about it, Barty. Because _Evan didn't know._ Barty, my Uncle Darius is one of us. It's not like me and my parents or Bella and hers, with Evan and his dad. Ours aren't getting in the way, but you can kind of tell they wish we hadn't gotten involved. I get this sense my parents and Granddad don't like our Lord, personally. I mean, they don't like him as a person, even when they like what he's for. But Uncle Darius is his friend. They've been close forever. Uncle doesn't talk about it much, he doesn't brag, but if you ever watch them together, you can tell. They're comfortable with each other. And I know he doesn't have as much of a reputation in England as a painter and a portraitist as the Rose  & Yew artists who don't travel as much, but he's got one internationally, Barty, he's _good._ "

A side of his mouth tugged up. "Sorry, I've got to use a Spike expression here; I just don't know how else to say this—Barty, it _beggars belief_ that our Lord would have gone to anyone but Uncle for a portrait. It just wouldn't make any sense."

Barty had been nodding along thoughtfully, sipping his own pint. "I'm with you so far," he said. "But I don't see that Rosier would know just because his father got the commission. I never got the impression they were especially close."

"They're not _close,_ " Reg agreed, "but it's probably not the kind of not-close you're thinking of. They just… never saw each other much. Evan knows his dad's proud of him, though. I mean, Uncle Darius wouldn't have _told_ him about doing a particular portrait if he wasn't supposed to, but I'll bet you anything he would have made sure Evan found out."

Barty gave him a cockeyed look over the rim of his glass. The lager made his eyes look washed out, but then most things made Barty look washed out. It probably made his Concealment and Disguise master weep tears of joy, and his Command and Intimidation master despair.

"Well, it's like how he made sure Evan would join when he grew up," he explained. "He wasn't going to _tell_ a little kid about it, obviously, but he sort of gave Evan the wink and the nod about eavesdropping on conversations he officially shouldn't have. So Evan knew what was what, and he knew it was a secret, and he knew his dad wanted him to be part of it. They don't _tell_ each other things, but… Uncle Darius would have been really proud, Barty. And he's proud of Evan. He'd have wanted him to know."

Seeing Barty's face, he scoffed, "Don't look like that. What did I just say? Our Lord's known Uncle Darius forever. He trusts his judgment, or they wouldn't _be_ close."

"Yeah, but maybe knowing him forever means he knows Master Rosier would let your cousin know and he doesn't want that," Barty pointed out.

Scoffing some more, Reg asked, "Why not? If a dad wants to hint at his kid that he's done something amazing, that doesn't mean he's going to _give him the keys to the vault._ Even if Uncle knew where the portrait was kept after it was painted, and why would he? That's not a portraitist's business, unless the client makes special arrangements, and I'm sure _he's_ got better security than anyone. And, like you said, having a portrait isn't exactly unusual. It's not as if it would be some great secret that he had one. _Everyone_ has one! The only secret would be about where it is, and I'm certainly not asking about that! I just want to make certain, because it's weird that Evan doesn't know for sure. So could you just tell Bella I'd feel better if I knew he was safe? I know she'd want to know for sure, too."

"She'd want to make him show it to her so she could snog it," Barty drawled. Reg scowled at him. He got an _I work with Alastor Moody and you're not intimidating_ look, but Barty sighed, "Fine, I'll ask her."

"Thanks," he smiled. "Do you want me to ask Narcissa to have your mum over for tea?"

Barty looked at him as though he'd just thrown a Quaffle into the stands in the middle of a game. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, so your mum would know she ought to have a word with your father."

The look did not alter. "What do you mean, have a word with him?"

They stared at each other, stymied. "Well, I don't know," Reg said finally, "just… whatever she does. Other People's Marriages: You Will Never Have Enough Context To Understand. It's a rule."

"Whatever she _does_?" Barty asked, mystified.

They stared at each other some more. Finally, Reg sighed. "In your training, is there something you're especially good at?" When Barty looked a little shifty, he said drily, "Right. Is that teacher afraid of your father?"

Just as dry, Barty informed him, "Reggie, the thing about people who have jobs is, usually they don't have them just for fun, but because they need money."

"Why?" Reg asked disingenuously. "Didn't they pay attention in Charms?" He beamed, having caught Barty in mid-drink and made him snort bubbles into his lager.

Barty peered at him cautiously. He widened his eyes, shining innocent inquiry. "You are kidding," Barty half-asked, caught on the wary line between certainty and hopelessness.

He laughed. "Barty, you realize, when it's a family like mine, 'heir' _is_ a job, do you? It's sort of a short way to say 'steward and junior bookkeeper.' Just because it's my parents I'm getting room and board and vault-access from doesn't mean I don't earn them. The only reason Evvie gets to live in London and not be bothered with all the accounts is he's still only third in line. The prat," he added ruefully.

Not because Evan's Rosier grandfather was still acting as Head of his family. Reg was happy for Ev, that his Grandpère still felt up to running the family as well as the family business. You didn't _have_ to be jealous of someone just because you would have liked to be in shoes like theirs, when they weren't taking anything away from you.

No, it was because everyone who knew Evan knew perfectly well that even once he became the Rosier heir, Spike would growl and snatch all the paperwork away from him after about a minute and a half of watching him look sadly at it with the quill drooping between his fingers. Evan first and foremost. The _prat_.

Barty relaxed, and raised his eyebrows drolly. "No wonder your brother skipped out. I can't see him bent over a ledger for longer than about thirty seconds at a time."

"Try two," Reg agreed sourly. "But, look, is that teacher _so_ afraid of your father they wouldn't be able to tell him, 'Barty has enough potential in my subject that I want to take up his time making him specialize?'"

He blinked. "I don't know."

"Okay," Reg said, taking pity. "Don't worry about it, I'll talk to Cissa."

Looking annoyed, Barty asked, "Does _everything_ come down to talking to Narcissa Malfoy with you?"

"Well, mostly," he explained, "because when it doesn't, she goes and tells Evan or Lucius to do it, or asks her mum, and then if none of them gets anywhere we—well, we used to save Bella for the last resort, but these days it's hard to think of anyone who could possibly deserve making her mad at them. So now we tell a house elf to make popcorn and then give Snape a red quill and tell him what the poor sod spelled wrong."

Barty squinted at him. "For a Slytherin, Reg, your world sounds improbably simple sometimes."

"'Deceptively,'" Reg said glumly. "The word you wanted was 'deceptively.'"

He really, _really_ hoped Bella would come back and say _Of course our Lord has a portrait, I've seen it, it's beautiful._ If Voldemort had prepared for his death like a normal wizard, then maybe, just _maybe_ he wasn't pursuing immortality research. Reg really hoped so. Immortality research never ended well, according to Madam Bagshot.

But he'd gone to Borgin and Burke's, and Judocus Borgin had been only too happy to be persuadable on the subject of leaving that nice young Regulus Black alone in his back room to look for a present for the esteemed Walburga Black. Quite alone, with all his really good stuff and also, coincidentally and unimportantly, his forty-year-old books. It hadn't even been nearly as much of a bribe as Reg had been prepared to pay, but of course he _had_ said it was for his mother, and no one especially wanted to be on her bad side.*

Reg wasn't exactly sure yet what he should be worrying about, specifically, because there were all sorts of nasty ways wizards had tried, over the centuries, to turn other people's lives into more life for themselves.

Nothing in _Reg's_ library involved the kind of slow life-sucking he'd started to panic over when he'd realized the pattern behind the sites that Borgin and Burke's young acquisitions clerk had dawdled over and dwelled on and found excuses to re-visit, the items Riddle hadn't managed to buy, whose owners had died around the times of his last visit—but never too close, never _too_ close. Reg hadn't found anything that involved any variants on the Protean charm, either. But then, that didn't mean the Dark Mark wasn't doing something Voldemort had made up himself.

If Madam Bagshort was right, then whether Riddle was a pureblood or not, he was certainly muggle-raised and his mother had never had the chance to have him painted, even as a child. Not that anyone wanted to live a whole life and wake in paint after death with an adult's memories and only a child's face to show, let alone a baby's, but it would still be better—safer—than the nothing that Riddle had been given by a mother who'd barely lived long enough to even give him life.

But that nobody from nowhere had vanished into nothing, and years later Voldemort had come to England out of Europe. Looking a bit melty, which nobody commented on, even though everybody knew that the only thing that changed a person's appearance subtly, unpredictably, and slowly, while making them happy about it (typically, according to what Reg had read, what the wizards would say about it was either 'this might look odd but it means I'm doing something right, mustn't stop in the middle,' or 'I'm becoming better than I was/the weaklings around me'), was serious, serious dark magic.

He'd come out of Europe, which was where Evvie and Spike were going, and going very soon. But asking after Voldemort's past, his beginnings, his researches, his experiments… not safe. Not smart. And they'd do it if Reg asked them to. They'd do it if he even _let them know there was a question._ Not even for him, but because Spike's extremely noticeable nose had obviously been plastered on his clever face as a warning to everyone that he was going to stick it in everywhere, he just was.

But maybe Bella would come back and hug him and say, _Oh, Reggie, it's so sweet of you to worry about our Lord, I knew you cared even if you are more of a sissy than Cissy, but you don't have to worry, he's got about twelve portraits locked away safely, I've seen them._

Maybe.

At least, either way, since Barty was legitimately too proud to tell him which teacher to lean on, he had an excuse to tell Lucius and Narcissa to get the _whole_ Auror training corps complaining about how Crouch was interfering with their recruits and treating his son-who-was-not-complaining. He didn't have the kind of connections to do it himself, but Cissa would make sure he got credit for the idea. And being pleased with him over starting trouble in the DMLE should keep Voldemort from thinking to wonder whether Reg's worry over his afterlife could have any ulterior motive.

He hoped. After all, that was the sort of thing he'd been told to do, but it wouldn't be some great and glorious success that would attract attention to him and win him another, harder task. It should just make Voldemort think Bella's weak cousin was gamely doing his best and was now slightly better placed to be of some slight use in stirring up the sort of atmosphere Voldemort wanted to take advantage of.

He hoped.

He was distracted from his brooding when he realized that Barty had, for the last several minutes, been telling him about a date he'd just been on, as an example of people's lives that were _really_ simple.

After Reg had been listening to his story, rather than looking interested with his ears turned off, for a little while, Barty broke off to scowl at him. "I don't know what you're looking at me like that for," he complained.

"Because I'm having flashbacks to fourth year," Reg said crossly. "Honestly, it's like watching Evan stomp all over Snape with his eyes closed all over again."

"Except that what Rosier wasn't-dating was his best friend who, by all accounts, wasn't clueing him up on the stomping, not his _deranged stalker,_ " Barty retorted. "I've told him a thousand times: I am _not his boyfriend._ "

"He might pay more attention if you, I don't know, _stopped shagging him_?" Reg suggested despairingly.

Barty looked at him flatly. "I tried that for two years and he just told everyone I was testing him and playing hard to get and focusing on my NEWTs."

"You were focusing on your NEWTs. You were _mental_ about it. You were worse than Snape, and _no one thought that was possible._ "

 _"Two years._ I've come to the conclusion that I might as well, since it's got absolutely nothing to do with what he thinks, and besides, I don't want to hear that from you."

"That's different," Reg shrugged.

"It's always different when it's you," Barty rolled his eyes.

"No," Reg explained, "it's different because I know that you don't care what he does and all three of us know that's just friends anyway. Whereas you're actually dating this witch, and he does care what you do."

"Maybe," Barty replied, unphased, "but you also know he'll convince himself I haven't done it, even if he sees me or I tell him to his face I have. And I don't know if I'm _dating_ her, we've only gone out twice so far…"

"…I'm not sure he's _that_ deluded, Barty."

"Good. Then maybe he'll realize _I'm not his boyfriend._ "

Reg glared at him. "Fine," he conceded grudgingly, "but when he does, you're paying me back for the damages, the bar bill, and the ten-million galleon makeover."

"With more pleasure," Barty assured him, clinking glasses, "than you can possibly imagine."

* * *

*** History of a Dialogue:**  
psyche_gurl: I am UTTERLY DEVASTATED that I didn't get a chance to read this scene! Not least because it would be AWESOME to see young Regulus Black playing on the family name, and because the inside of Borgin and Burke's has always struck me as utterly fascinating in both its proprietors and its merchandise. :D :D

potionpen: Honestly, I felt like it was such standard, low-level intrigue that it wasn't worth writing out, but I guess it'd be good to have as a bonus/omake.. n,n

* * *

**Omake!**

Reggie: Hello, Mr. Borgin.

Borgin: Why, Mr. Black, what a pleasure. What can we help you with?

Spike-in-Reggie's-head: WITH WHAT MAY _I_ help you. (scowlyface)

Reggie: Well, I'm not entirely sure, Mr. Borgin, but, you see, my mother's birthday's coming up, and I was sure I could find something she'd like here.

Borgin: (fulsome delightedness)

Reggie: (looks around dispiritedly) (disappointed sigh)

Borgin: But of course Mrs. Black is a lady of taste and discernment. Perhaps you'll find something more to your taste in our back room.

Reggie: (brightening) Oh, I'm sure I will. — _What_ a lot of filing cabinets, is that where you keep the smaller things?

Borgin: No, no, Mr. Black, just our records. We keep scrupulous records, you know, they go back to my grandfather's day.

Reggie: Well, of course you do, the old place is Diagon history, really. And I suppose you must keep them very safe.

[pointed eye contact]

Borgin: (resigned, as he sees a sale go out the window) Yes, yes, very safe indeed. Quite as safe as two houses, I should say.

Reggie: (reassuringly, glancing around) Well, I shouldn't like to keep you from your other customers. If you'd be comfortable letting me bob along back here for a bit, I _am_ sure I'll find something for Mother.

Borgin: (slightly more hopeful, although you can't rely on these nobs) Anything for Mrs. Black, of course.

Reggie: Thanks very much, I'll try not to take too long.

(Handshake which leaves Borgin with a couple of galleons and Reggie with the key to the file cabinets.)

(Exit Borgin)


	12. Nottingham Central Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tobias Snape gets run all around the mulberry bush on a wild goose chase, and just because he's so depressed about it he'd cheerfully kill for a beer doesn't mean he's even slightly surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings**  
>  for mentions of past domestic abuse, sorely repented, and for all manner of other difficult familial emotional tangles, including unrepentant recollections of… er… physical child's-behavior-management tactics that would probably be called corporal punishment if not abusive today, but would barely have registered to either a kid involved or to onlookers as anything as serious as a scolding in the time and place Severus grew up.
> 
> Also for, er, utterly-on-crack-or-acid Beatles movies and other references you might have to look up if you're significantly younger than Harry, do NOT bother with watching Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang but do read the book (by Ian Fleming) and do find the [dance scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-LtvVHzvsQ) on Youtube, and all other materials referenced are at least worth a try, IMO. And also for SLYTHERIN! using… sorta-muggle-magic many muggles would consider discredited.
> 
>  **Temporary notes** : Because the latest chapter I've been working on has been a slow-and-steady (I am actually thrilled about this), I will not be posting the DVD bonus extras today, which means anyone can still ask characters in couples questions about each other. If it's not up by the next post, it will be either because the chapter-to-be-written-next is going really well or because work got absolutely terrifying for Valentines day.
> 
>  **Notes** : It was very apt for HP fans that he played the Metatron. He was, not the voice of God, but the voice of Snape. He was the one who stilled and gentled that snarling, snapping, spitting, melodramatic flailbasket into the cool, still-water depth we could (some of us) believe in as not just a former thoughtless-and-angry-kid but one who'd learned and grown, not just a spy among monsters but a disciplined and competent one, not just a stubborn and hating man but one who could be ruthless with himself for the good of the many, not just a man of passion but one with heart.
> 
> In honor of our (extremely) reluctant hero and his (extremely compelling) voice, let us say:
> 
> Tell all the truth but tell it slant —  
> Success in Circuit lies  
> Too bright for our infirm Delight  
> The Truth's superb surprise  
> As Lightning to the Children eased  
> With explanation kind  
> The Truth must dazzle gradually  
> Or every man be blind —
> 
> _Emily Dickinson: 1263_

There was a modern, almost futuristic look to the glass doors of the Nottingham public library, running a ring around the ground floor so that the brickwork of the upper stories seemed to float above it, that should have improved Toby’s mood.

Only he oughtn’t to have been in Nottingham. Nottingham was a six-hour round trip. And he ought to have been grateful for the extra work, but there was only howling and static on the wireless and Ellie, when he’d phoned the post office and their lass had run down to fetch her, hadn’t been in the least sympathetic. She hadn’t even done him the courtesy of at least pretending to be a bit jealous and demanding that the bloke in Central Processing tell her himself that yes, it really was because of work that Toby would be home late. Which would have been trust he could brag about twenty years ago, but was going to look to the bloke like middle-aged indifference now.

And it was all right irregular. Toby had taken the lorry with the bins of Nelson, Bury, Bolton, Sawley, and Blackburn’s books for inter-library loan to the North West Libraries Central Processing location in Preston, just as usual, right on time. But then the man there had gone over all harried and said there was an awfully important delivery to be made from Nottingham Central—which wasn’t in their interlending partnership at all—and Nottingham wouldn’t spare a man—what with not being lending partners—but some mayor or other was breathing right down the library boards’ necks and Toby had best go fetch it.

Yes, even if it _would_ be a bit less out of the way for the driver from Cheshire, or even the one from the libraries around Liverpool and Manchester. Toby was there to take the delivery _now._

And _now_ he was in Nottingham, and he didn’t want to be there. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure—but only because he wasn’t a hundred percent sure of anything from those days: he was _nearly_ sure—that he remembered seeing the occasional stub for Nottingham bus tickets showing up in the expenses-and-receipts Eileen had tried to keep. A pair of them in August, just before Seth had first gone off to school, the occasional one after. Not always while Seth was home, either.

He also didn’t like being anywhere near the Malt Cross. The old music hall had been a warehouse last he’d heard, but he’d have wagered his Alfred Bester anthology that you could still find, on its steps, the sort of run-down old codgers who gravitated to it because their boots knew the way.

In other words, by exactly the sort of run-down old sots who’d known his mam (how well, Toby didn’t know and refused to consider; he did know standards had been declining sharply for some years by the time she’d managed to get out of show business, if moral standards had ever been very high backstage of the music halls, which he doubted) and, very occasionally, recognized him. Or, even more occasionally, took him for his da. He was never sure which was worse, which was why he’d stopped coming back here before he’d even met Eileen.

Then again, maybe they were all dead by now.

Toby had met people who looked as if, on occasion, they had cheering thoughts that weren’t twice as depressing (‘Christ, when did I get old’ was for when a bloke’s son first trounced him at football or some such, and Toby had never had that kind of Boys’ Own Magazine luck. Even when the lad had tried his hand at a bit of age-appropriate poaching and that he’d tried to do it intelligently, with attempts at engineering that were sometimes almost reasonable and sometimes _hysterical,_ in any-to-all senses of the word), but they all looked to him as if they were simple, born with their teeth all stuck out from sucking on silver spoons (at least by Nelson standards), or faking it to keep up the wife’s spirits.

He had already been craving a good dark bitter for about four hours and a hundred windy, bumpy, twisty, fender-to-fender miles (mostly but by no means entirely on the A50m, and during rush hour for the last stretch) when he pulled up at Nottingham Central. And that was _before_ the snotty little pimple behind the desk told him the library had no such request in its records, including the day’s message slips in the bin by the phone at the checkout desk. Not even on the ansaphone.

In fact, he’d already been wanting one so badly it had stopped being a thought and turned into a sort of dry pulse at the back of his tongue a good half hour before he’d even pulled into the city, let alone before the pimple had been reduced (rather too quickly for it to be at all satisfying) to a floppy, quivering sweat-rag and got on the phone with Central Processing. Who had no flipping idea what Toby was on about. Despite the signed order Toby had on his clipboard.

Slamming down the receiver onto the cradle, Toby was already thinking that it was more than any bloke could be expected to stand, and anyone would understand. He knew this area like the back of his hand, for all he hadn’t been here in years. They couldn’t all have closed. And all right, it was a bit late in the day, but people had to eat. People who’d had a domestic and couldn’t eat at home had to eat, and would want something to wash it down with while they moaned to a sympathetic ear. Nottingham was a big city. _Something_ had to be open. Surely.

And then the pimple said, in a self-righteous tone, “See, Mr. Snape? I _told_ you we’d never gotten any order like that.”

He turned with a snarl on the scrawny little oik. The flash of terror in its eyes was blue, and there was a spray of freckles standing dark against the extremely pink skin of its splodgy young nose, but the back of Toby’s hand was half-raised, just as if—just as if.

He lowered it, and took a deep breath, and said in the most even tone he could manage (not very), “You don’t want to go rubbing it in when a man’s been on the road three hours for no reason, son. Now, just you make a note here on my bit of paper that the order was in error, and I’ll be off. And sign it—and has your checkout date stamp got the library’s name on it? Just you fetch the book embosser then, let’s have them both—good lad.”

Shaken, still quaking somewhere inside, he headed back for the lorry the long way around the library, just to put the clipboard in. He’d still have to find a place to eat in town, but he needed the walk to clear his head enough to think where to go that wasn’t a pub. Or a chippy; most likely he wouldn’t go half a block without tripping over one of those, but he thought the smell of the grease might make him sick in his current state of mind.

He was having trouble remembering where else there might be a bite to be had. Just like he wasn’t sure about the old men, he wasn’t sure whether it would be worse if he couldn’t remember because he’d never gone anywhere hereabouts that wasn’t one, or because he just couldn’t get foam and amber out of his head.

Because it was that kind of day, he was startled but, on some fundamental level, _not in the least surprised_ to see a rawboned figure lounging casually against his lorry, with a touch of offensive elegance that was begging to get his head clobbered in by some local tough with half a brick in a sock who was just bright enough to know a fancy boy when he saw one but couldn’t see when he was being invited to bite off more than a pit bull could chew.

Toby’s one consolation was that he wasn’t the only bloke in Nelson to have been rudely astonished by suddenly finding this out. That, and that no one had believed him about it, as scraggy and bookish a weed as the lad had been, and going about just with his books for friends and the one lass he trailed after like a puppy in the summers. No one had believed him and, which had at least been funny, in a darkish sort of way, for years they hadn’t believed their own lads who’d complained of coming off the worse for scrapping with Seth. Toby didn’t think he’d ever gotten more drunk in his life than when he’d noticed his mates had stopped chuckling about owl-eyed little Seth and his extended fits of the sullens and his nose that didn’t actually mean Toby was his da when he’d plainly just squished it hooked by reading too close-up to too many books, and started going edgy around the boy instead.

Seth was dressed normally, for once, in only slightly weird shirtsleeves and quite ordinary trousers, his hippie hair swept back in a short, tatty tail that was, most like, as near respectable as it was going to get without a cut. His shoes were a bit unusual, bit of an odd sheen to the leather that no doubt meant they were made of something unnatural, but nothing damning. Went up under his cuffs, of course, but then Seth never would wear shoes when he could get away with boots. He said he’d formed the habit because he was friends with girls who were always kicking him in the shins, but Toby knew it was from earlier than that.

If second-hand _boots_ were too big for growing feet, they could be strapped down, tied tight to a boy’s legs and hidden under his trousers. You could tie a lad’s shoes tight, but there was no way to stop it looking like exactly what it was, even if he wore enough socks to stop the whole affair pinching. Ellie had suggested spats, but Toby hadn’t thought Seth needed to actively _court_ fights with the other boys, and besides, since no one else had worn the things since before Toby was born, it wouldn’t have taken anyone long to work out what the boy was hiding under them.

Toby stopped short, and glared at him, and settled in to prepare to glare all day. No telling how long it would take the mid-sized brat to notice him. Anyone else would have been only pretending to read—well, some doorstopper of a hardcover—but given Seth, he probably really was.

Infuriatingly, Seth glanced at Toby as soon as he’d pulled up. And while he did look a bit surprised, it wasn’t so much _fancy meeting you here_ as _you have exceeded my expectations all out of proportion._ “Straight home, then?” he inquired, as though they were already in the middle of a conversation, closing the book. In the moment before it disappeared (really disappeared) under his arm, Toby could see it was  The Magic Mountain. Which he more-than-suspected was meant to provoke him on at least three levels, and that wasn’t even counting the title.

And Seth so clearly, _clearly_ meant _straight home rather than to a pub after your awful day I ought to know nothing about_ that all Toby could ask, flatly, was, “Why.”

“Oh, well.” Seth shrugged an infuriating, airy little shrug he must have learned at school, it was so disgustingly upmarket. “I thought, if you were going to be hacked off at me, it might as well be for something that was my fault. Come on—it would have raised questions if I’d exchanged for sterling, so I can’t pay back your petrol—and in any case, if you’re not getting paid back for that you need to renegotiate your contract—but I’ll stand you tea.”

Toby breathed out through his nose. “How,” he demanded, in much the same tone as before, since his other option was to start shouting, which wasn’t on even though they were only _behind_ the library, “do you mean to ‘stand me tea’ if you haven’t got money.”

“I haven’t got _your_ money,” Seth corrected. He _almost_ managed not to be a snotty brat about it, except that his eyebrows were slightly and politely up. “Can you leave your lorry here a while without my doing anything to it?”

“The question,” he growled, “won’t come up.”

The eyebrows went higher. “I got you here without doing one thing that’s beyond your powers, and that was a courtesy. How much time would you like to waste fratchin’ when I make it your dinner was six hours ago and you haven’t the first notion what the hell is going on and in no wise did I get this nose from Mam?”

His mouth twitched unwillingly, not least at the way all that had sounded in the slow-rolling RP Seth was refusing to drop. Which was pure needlesomeness: he’d let it bend a few times on Friday when he was talking to Eileen, and the other week, so it wasn’t that he couldn’t speak like a regular person any more.

“If you think you can butter me up on account of having no oil in me lamp you can think again, me lad,” he said sternly, letting his own voice fall back to the heavier, broader patter of his childhood, before the wireless and the telly had started changing everyone a bit without their really noticing. Just to make his point. “I haven’t forgotten those airs and graces m’ludd honored us mere mortals with the last time we was favored with yer presence.”

“They’re still trying to break me of ‘what the hell’ and that,” Seth offered, with a little smirk. “Or, I should say, again. Besides, it was only humane. Evan was there both times, and he flinches so much when I don’t speak public-school he’d have been knees over nose before we’d been there five minutes.”

Toby let his face express his opinion of that.

“No, it’s just the Lanky,” Seth said glumly, and now he had relaxed his voice a little, although he still would have gotten jeered at on their street. “He says it’s flat. Says it makes me sound like an elephant stepped on me throat. Hated it first day we met, and there’s all sorts at school and he doesn’t make faces at any of them. Not even the groundskeeper, and he’s got such a comfortable Tyke everyone treats him like an armchair with attached teakettle, even though he’s an absolute nutter who keeps for a pet a dog the size of a small gazebo who can set things on fire like a dragon, and his rock cakes may actually be made from rocks and I’d _swear_ he uses cyanoacrylate in his treacle fudge.”

“…Uses what?”

Seth frowned a don’t-expect-me-to-remember-your-silly-real-world-brand-names frown. “…Special glue?”

“ _Superglue?”_

“No doubt. Any road, either that or extraordinarily quick-drying cement.”

Toby stared at the deceptively distracted expression draped disinterestedly over the pale, sharp features and their dark, bland eyes and their darkish, bluish circles, then scrubbed a hand over his own eyes and down his face. “It is your damn fault I can’t have a drink,” he declared tiredly.

“I didn’t burn down the fucking mill,” Seth said irritably, blasé attitude instantly discarded if not forgotten, “and I didn’t tell you who to marry, and as far as I’m aware I didn’t fill out an order form on the subject of how to be born, and I sure as hell didn’t tell you how to feel about everything there is, in fact, not the least use in the world in pretending I was not born _as and to be._ Neither would I call it ‘my fault’ that you’ve apparently decided that being a man for once in my life is a decision you can stick to, although if you want to unaccountably give me credit I will, albeit in some confusion, graciously accept it. Now are you going to come and have tea or am I going to have to hie me back to Spinner’s End and tell Mam I tried to do the decent and wave goodbye with an olive branch but you were such a stiff-necked arse you couldn’t even swallow that?”

He stared some more. “I could almost believe,” he said slowly, refusing to ask what _wave goodbye_ was about, since Seth so badly wanted him to. Not when he was acting like this. Acting like this ought not to be rewarded _,_ “that you _didn’t_ do anything unnatural to get me here, d’ye ken, because that was the most manipulative operation I’ve ever heard in me life.”

“I doubt it,” Seth said, doing a good impression of imperturbable for a short-fuse bottle rocket with a warped guide stick. “More like, it’s the least veiled one; in the art of manipulative operations I am the merest apprentice and, they tell me, persistently wearing oven gloves. But, in fact, I did not. Although, of course, even Mesmer himself never claimed his techniques worked for everyone, so I suppose one might have to be magical to use them. Wizards think it must be mind-magic, but they think so even when they can _measure_ that there’s no magic in the room, and unmagical qi manipulators like reiki practitioners agree that something is going on when they see it. Anyway, it’s not _doing_ something. I know the difference, I should think.”

“…You _mesmerized_ Central Processing,” he abridged flatly, plastering a hand over his eyes, and, this time, leaving it there.

He could hear the crisp cloth rustle as Seth shrugged. “If you like. Not the whole office. And hypnotism doesn’t really sound any better, does it? But it’s probably the same thing with more paraphernalia and different jargon. All that matters is conviction, really. Although I’m told having eyes without apparent irises helps. On which subject, which is to say, conviction, don’t think for a moment I won’t slash your tires. I’d repair them when we were done, of course, but I was bluffing about Mam.”

He took his hand down and glared. For what must have been the nine millionth time, he asked, “Boy, what is the _matter_ with you?!”

“I’m a cobra born of a lioness, in a pit of mostly rabid vipers,” Seth said, all matter-of-fact except for the disturbing sleep-what-sleep glint in his eye, “and the world is crashing down around my ears. An inevitability, no doubt, what with being made up largely of sheep, psychopaths, and overenthusiastic flailing gorillas with brick-thick skulls filled with the porridge of sloshing self-righteousness. And if I survive the next month I have to go teach a class with an actual sodding mortality rate in the same bloody secondary school full of the same smarmy little over-bred wankers who thought seeing me hexed inside-out and humiliated was either hilarious or just another Tuesday. And everyone’s going to tell me I’ve no one to blame but myself since if you want to be technical I asked for it, but to the best of my knowledge you didn’t burn down the mill, either.”

He paused, and added, more wry than sullen, “And it’s _your_ fault, entirely, that _I_ can’t drink. To get drunk, that is. I’m told it helps.”

Toby gave up. He hadn’t understood the half of that, but he knew that feeling, didn’t he just. And that last point… was a point, and since it wasn’t being slammed at him like a real accusation and no one was demanding he admit it, he could. “I thought all you little sods spent half your lives gobbling mushrooms and puffing weeds,” he commented.

Seth made a face. “I don’t, in fact, want my mind altered. My year did go through the phase, more and less embarrassingly. The grass, at any rate; we all learn enough about mushrooms in herbology to hesitate there. Well, most of us. Some of us. But the other, yes. And there are always morons experimenting, usually without any sound grounding in theory. I did try the usual with my roommates, but since everyone else enjoyed it on the first go and I didn’t, I decided not to repeat the experiment.” He gave Toby an inquisitive _what about you?_ look. It might have been about 10% curiosity and 10% mischief, but the rest was pure, sardonic _this is what you get for horning in where you’ve given up all rights to_ capital-S Sauce. “Watching them was entertaining until it wasn’t anymore, but the stuff just makes me twitchy.”

Twitchier, Toby substituted—silently, because he was sure rubbing it in was, at this point in Seth’s life, unnecessary. He sighed and, having already given up, gave in. “Oh, all right. Are you magicking me home after, then?”

“If you’re getting the lorry towed,” Seth said, eyeing it coolly. “I _could_ slash the tires, if you like. Mixing magic and electronics is complicated where it’s not so improbable as to be impossible for all practical purposes, and while technomancy is a fascinating field and you’d like it, I shouldn’t care to try to apparate with even a smaller device, by myself, over a far shorter distance.”

“I must have been Jack the Ripper in a previous life,” Toby said to no one in particular. Anybody else in the _world,_ he was sure, would have just said ‘no,’ ‘bad idea,’ or, at worst, ‘only if you want me to blow up your lorry trying.’

The headache wasn’t that he hadn’t understood Seth’s jargon. He had, he thought, more or less. It was that the young idiot apparently still wasn’t bothering to tune his tongue according to whether whoever he was talking to had a chance at following his blether or was going to belt him one for being an impenetrable, supercilious swot who was surely only talking like that as a way of looking down his considerable nose at the workaday folks.

“No, that was me, I expect,” Seth said in the same indifferent tone. “You incurred your karmic debt in this one, but I suppose it could have been worse.”

“Probably weren’t Jack the Ripper, then,” he pointed out, droll, winning a black, humorless smile and a sardonic _ha_. No more carelessly-smooth nervous jibber-jabber, he noted, realizing with a pang he’d never have admitted to that he wasn’t at all sure whether this meant that Seth’s nerves were getting to him more than ever because they were coming to the meat of his matter, or settled now he knew he’d won. “Let’s have at it, then. Where did you want to eat?”

“I _want_ to eat at home,” Seth said, with a trace of that sullen insistence on being far more perfectly accurate than the situation required that had so often earned him, as a boy, not one of the beatings that Toby had been ashamed of after, but a sound and sorely-needed ding alongside the ear. Not because Toby had felt it was misbehavior that deserved punishing, exactly, but because he’d had wildly optimistic dreams of making Seth stop being an unpleasant brat no one wanted to have a drink with before he was old enough bring on himself more trouble than a cautionary swat. “But we’re _going_ to the Sherwood.”

“There’s nowt but tourist traps in there,” Toby protested.

He’d opened his mouth to tell the lad that they were already in an area with plenty of probably quite reasonably places to eat or grab a bite, but the side of Seth’s mouth had curled. “That’s what you think,” he said, and stepped forward to take Toby’s arm, for all the world like a gentleman escorting a lady twice his size.

The world spun.

“So,” Toby glared, when he’d finished retching into the grass, caught onto the nearest tree and staggered upright, and wiped his mouth. “We’ve found something you’re bad at, to the tune of ‘bloody awful.’”

“Not too bad,” Seth said in his judicious eighty-year-old-gaffer voice, “considering my age. It would be strange to be able to take a passenger smoothly before, oh, sixty, perhaps forty if one was much practiced.” He glanced at Toby, and relented with a taking-pity look that, as it didn’t involve actual pity, was forgivable. “There’s always a sacrifice, in travel,” he explained. “If it’s not a capital-T Theory, it’s close. Travel takes time or is uncomfortable. The best unmagical solutions, the ones with motors and reasonably comfortable seats—they’re not as fast as magical travel, but not as much of a short, sharp shock to the system… but the emissions situation is only _better_ than it was since the Industrial Revolution, not _good._ ”

Toby supposed he ought to be pleased Seth was still keeping track of real life at least a little bit, but somehow he wasn’t.

“No, I’m not the only one to be aware of the fact,” Seth said sharply, watching his face, “and you _ought_ to be concerned. For perfectly mundane reasons as well, of course.” He shrugged. “Our closest equivalent is faster, but doesn’t have the comfortable seats and is most like bicycles, one-seaters only. The real public-transit system isn’t as uncomfortable as what you just went through, but there’s a monetary cost involved in every use—that is to say, you have to pay for what makes it work—and setting it up was at least as big a project as the Underground, in its own way. There are two sorts of cab equivalents, both uncomfortable.”

“Worse’n that?” Toby asked dryly.

Seth looked judicious again, and waggled a hand. “Both will leave you dizzy and knocked on your arse, both want paying for, and the one that’s an actual vehicle is, as you might expect, far more traumatizing than the one that is, at least theoretically, rather tightly in Ministry control. Although they’ll sell you hot chocolate if you really feel it’s the thing to wear this season. And what we just did… learning it is hard, and you have to be licensed, and what you just experienced is ‘average.’ ‘Bloody awful’ involves leaving bits of yourself behind.”

Toby was staring again, and not just out of retroactive horror. If Ellie had ever told him this much, he didn’t remember it.

Seth added, enjoying himself, “Flying carpets exist, and have very little in the way of down-side as far as I’m aware, apart from not being demonically swift, but there’s an embargo on and no sign of lifting it. I’m sure it’s only because the broom-makers lobbied to cut out their competition. Which, I suppose, would have been forgivable if any of them were showing any signs of putting out some sort of family or even couple’s transport themselves.”

“Eileen always said she mustn’t tell me anything,” he said suspiciously. And Seth was making it all sound… well, actually, just like science fiction did. Utterly people-are-people, under the flashy props. Lobbyists! But then, Seth knew what Toby liked to read, didn’t he just, and he’d somehow got _proud_ of being a slippery customer. “She said—”

“Either what her father convinced her of,” Seth said, sounding as if he wanted to spit, his upper lip curling like a homicidal camel, which was a new expression for him to be aiming at someone else, and Toby rather enjoyed the novelty, “or what was true thirty years ago. Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “‘unwise,’ as a word, is still such an unutterable understatement that its failure to describe the situation is like unto an ant and its little roll of measuring tape trying to tackle a giraffe.”

Full of the familiar sense of _baffled_ that, on top of everything else that had been on top of him, had kept biting his ankles all the way to the pub, Toby demanded, “Then why are you doing it?”

Seth frowned as if he hadn’t even noticed being barked at, which had to be acres worse in the getting-old department than getting trounced at football. As if feeling his way, he tried, “Because… because there was that book you read about the black horse, before we couldn’t stand each other any more, and the most willing and sweet-tempered horses shied when they were blinkered, and jaded their mouths and frightened or angered their drivers into laying on the whip. Because everyone I know thinks the unmagical are either disgusting beasts or an encroaching threat or precious little children, and if anyone’s tried before, without really meaning to bring someone in who wasn’t naïve and didn’t want to change worlds already, I don’t know about it. Because it’s less of a bad idea here; the Sherwood is different and word won’t get out.”

He paused. It was the one Toby had always thought meant he’d churned through enough faux-reasonable justifications that he thought maybe he could try adding on a touch of honesty for flavor. Eileen said that was unfair, and maybe it was. Either way, Toby knew it meant he was about to hear what was at the heart of it now, or at least, as much as Seth was willing to risk letting on to.

“Because you were appalling,” Seth did, in fact, add, in what would have been nearly a blurt if it hadn’t been such a tightly-regulated and resigned tone, “but I have it on good authority that I’m not any great pleasure when those under my aegis are keeping secrets that might be hurting them, either. Because I don’t know what’s coming, and Mam’s a mule about closing her eyes to a world that knows who she is and how to find her, and I’m not as much of a nobody as would make me quite comfortable—”

Toby rolled his eyes while Seth was itchily winding his gaze around a rock off to the right. _Comfortable._ This from someone who’d been snapping at adults that they shouldn’t use words they didn’t understand when he was scarce up to their hips.

“—And I won’t be around for a few weeks, and once back I won’t be as free in my movements.”

His eyes snapped to Toby’s, hard. “Because I think, perhaps, you might not have been fully yourself when you rendered her helpless, but she was fully herself when she decided to live with it, to live that way. She thinks that to be _fully_ herself would hurt you. Would, somehow, unman you. _Rubbish._ But you’ve always felt it would, haven’t you. When actually you don’t know a damned thing about it.”

He bristled, and snapped back, “Well, you’ve got one thing right—I don’t. And you needn’t be so high and mighty, my lad, I don’t recall your being in any ripping hurry—”

“I shouldn’t, if I were you,” Seth said, silky soft, “begin any sentences to me with ‘I don’t recall.’ You _don’t_ recall, I suppose. I do. I _was_ in a ‘hurry.’ Once. I do, indeed, recall the reception I was met with, that first Christmas, just trying to tell about being grateful for the chance to learn what I was learning, trying to assure you and Mam I wasn’t ungrateful for my opportunities, even as miserable as I was that first year. Oh, I remember.”

“You always were a hard one,” Toby said after a moment, more subdued. “End of the universe, and you’ll be ordering cold grudge on toast.”

Seth looked at him as if he were mad.

“Sequel to Hitchhikers’,” he explained.

This did not appear to help.

On balance, he decided, “Never mind. You wouldn’t like it. Surrealistic.”

Seth considered this, and offered, “I sent a flying… er, like a leather gauntlet, for sports, a glove, I turned it blue and sent it to keep poking a particular irritant in the head every time he ruffled his hair until Lily took pity on him and told him what to sing.”[1]

“…Right, then.” He supposed he ought to be glad that the boy had taken something from that film, but what _he_ had taken from it was a pounding headache, what with all the highly critical and disapproving commentary from either side of him, vivisecting into whimpering submission everything that would otherwise have been funny or charming as it assuredly was bizarre, the offended-goose hissing from the seats behind, and the going-down-in-flames of the lovely, normal family outing they’d been scrimping for weeks for.

He’d thought at the time that he should have saved his ticket money for the other children’s movie, the one with Dick van Dyke and the flying car and the Morris-dancing-more-or-less, but in retrospect (and having seen the reviews) he ought either to have pleased himself and gone to 2001 or taken Ellie and Seth to The Lion in Winter. He’d thought at the time it would be miles over Seth’s head and would flatter Eileen’s pretentions, but now he knew the pretentions were beyond hope and in the bone and it was quite possible he’d been pulling the wool over his own eyes on the other count as well, no matter how young the boy had been.

Seth was giving him that wary look, so he explained. Mostly. Leaving Ellie’s airs out of it.

“Why would it have been over my head?”

“It’s meant to have been a very clever script, with enough politics and backstabbing to make your head spin,” he explained. Resentfully, because (in retrospect), he wasn’t half sure it _would_ have done, he further elaborated, “You were _eight._ ”

“Oh. Still, I wish you had,” Seth said frankly. “The quarter of the school I ended up in prides itself on being _exactly_ like that.” He thought about it. “Only the script often isn’t very clever at all. They wanted to put me either where Mam was when she was at school, or her mother, and I might have agreed to that if I’d known what I was risking, fighting so hard. It would have been easier.”

Toby snorted. In his experience, every time his lad was offered an easier way, he eviscerated it and then plunged a handful of rock salt in the hole, just to make sure it got extra-offended and hit him harder.

“But I wouldn’t have _had_ to be like that, in Hufflepuff,” Seth said irritably, apparently reading his mind. “They’re not the amiable milksops Mam’s House seems to think they are, by and large, but they do culturally think that kindness is something one does by reflex, unless there’s a good reason not to.”

“And what would your ‘House’ substitute there, for kindness?” he asked, half wary and half skeptical.

Seth frowned again, considering. “I don’t think it’s the same,” he said finally. “You can’t plug in a substitute, it doesn’t work. They want to be kind, when they can, they think they ought. There’s nothing that we all, each of us, as a group, aspires to _be_. People say there is, but we’re not of a type, and don’t try to be. They are, we do. In terms of self-conception. And in how we’re described. Hufflepuff duffers are loyal plodders, while those ambitious Slytherins are cunning plotters. So it is said.”

“And what are you plotting, then?”

“I’ve already said, do keep up.”

He eyed Seth skeptically, meeting Sardonic Face, which was, he supposed, at least on a grown lad, different from Cheeky Little Bastard face. “How cunning a plan’s that, then?”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Seth retorted, and, turning, strode away, towards an apparently random tree. He peered at it, hand held out as if feeling his way, and then moved to another, and another. Finally, he said, “Ah,” and reached out, fingers pointed down, to touch it.

Tobias thought the branches tried to draw away from him.

Seth scowled at it, evidently taking personal offense. “Excuse us,” he said curtly, “but we need to get through.” He plastered his hand on the oak’s trunk and turned his hand until his fingers were skyward. Then he shook that pale stick of his out from up his sleeve with a flick of his wrist (which he must have thought was funny, because Toby remembered he’d used to carry it at his hip, like a shortsword, and the Rosier-thing had carried its own that way) and scribbled something on the bark.

The tree made a protesting noise, more like branches creaking in the wind than splinters. It pulled away from itself, leaving a hole through its middle wide and tall enough for them both to pass through.

Seth tried to tug him through, and then got behind him and shoved. He was, a corner of Toby’s mind admitted grudgingly while the rest of it froze, strong for some cross between an especially scrawny greyhound and a cranky dwarf bloodhound. But then, he had played that flying footie.

The tree-thing wasn’t as bad as whatever Seth had done earlier. It must have been that cabbie equivalent he’d mentioned, because it only left Toby dizzy and reeling. This, however, was most unfortunate, because it also left him—all right, them—standing behind a public loo. Really right next to it, just where the oak had been.

And really quite dizzy. Which was not a state one wanted to be in while a foot and a half from the back wall of a public loo.

 

* * *

[1] The Blue Meanies from the animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine (which was rather lovely but/and on an awful lot of crack) attacked their targets with the creatures... er, weapons... er, beings... objects..  _entities_ seen below, until Our Heroes struck up a rousing (but rather droning) chorus of All You Need Is Love.

[ ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiMpNWTgNjKAhWHXB4KHa_9C-sQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fyellowsubmarine.wikia.com%2Fwiki%2FThe_Dreadful_Flying_Glove&psig=AFQjCNGIDczKkufYxjbfjNL_bl_HgAT2Tw&ust=1454465240468214)

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : I've been reminded by hwyla on ffnet that Alan Rickman played Mesmer. I had totally forgotten about this, but I'm very glad to have been able to reference two of his other movies (Hitchhikers' being the other) in this particular post. You will be missed, sir.


	13. Hallow Way, Sherwood Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sevvie has two daddies—and not only haven't they ever liked each other, they've never met, and they were never _going_ to like each other, and really, Severus, what were you _thinking_ , next time just take a valium…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** for... hmm. If you need warnings for References to Past Domestic Badness and Past Alcoholism, I assume you've just joined us at this chapter and have also never read HP canon, and suggest you don't just jump in just here, tbh. Er. Warnings for colossal geekery? No, the same caveat applies... sorry, I'm stumped. n,n;; The ending made my beta Very Sad Indeed, but I think that was at least mostly a her thing...
> 
>  **Timing Notes** : Guys, GUYS, I am so sad not to be posting this actually on V-day, you have no idea. This chapter was going to be perfect for that, I was _pso syched_. :(((( All I can say is, "Comcast, if you cannot hack the climate in a place, do not try to hold a monopoly in that place." :(

“Oh, relax,” Seth said, with only slightly less contempt than he might have done, after watching Toby scramble away from the side of the public loo he’d fallen against and try and scrape himself off. “The paint’s self-cleaning.”

“That’s a nice trick,” he said suspiciously.

“Isn’t it,” Seth agreed with a smugness that turned, after a moment, a bit lip-curling. “You haven’t the background for the details of the formula, of course, but I’m sure you can, at least, imagine _why_ I came up with it.” Purely smug again, in answer to Toby’s skeptical look, “I could only get it patented last year, because if you go through the Ludicrous Patents Office as a private citizen instead of as a member of one of the professional guilds you might as well just put your formula in the papers, but I came up with it in ’74. About two months after the school started letting us, and by ‘us’ I primarily mean ‘my room-mate Avery,’ visit the village and its two pubs on the occasional weekend.”

Toby had thought he was meant to be amused at this Laddish Anecdote. Possibly not, though, because Seth got one of his chillier snotty looks and went on, “Not that I wouldn’t have liked to before. After our first Hogsmeade weekend, however, my Housemates became quite eager to enable my research.”

Passing as neutrally as possible over the landmine in that one, Toby remarked, “I suppose you must be doing well for yourself, then.”

Seth froze.

Toby raised an eyebrow at him. It had been the sort of freeze that had used to mean Whatever Petty Evans Told You Behind My Back Is Probably Slightly True Even Though Her Version Is Hysterically Inflated And I At-Least-Mostly Didn’t Mean To Even Though She Had It Coming But If You’re Expecting Me To Explain Myself I Wouldn’t Hold My Breath Because It Was Actually Lily’s Fault/Idea/She Secretly Wanted Me To, Very Loudly, Even If She Didn’t Come Out And Say It And Is Now Taking Her Cow Of A Sister’s Side Like I Knew She Would Which Is Why I _Didn’t_ Mean To. Except She Wanted Me To So Yes I Did.

He’d always wondered if Seth had ever noticed that, while he did get punished for those, it was usually just by having his day filled with the sorts of chores he only minded when he felt they were between him and his books.

At least, when it had been Toby the girl had come tattling to, and he’d been thinking clearly. She’d had a knack for barging in to be righteous at him at the wrong moments. Then of course sometimes she’d told Eileen instead. Ellie hadn’t thought Seth was doing right in taking falls for his little friend, taking the position that it was both lying and bad for young Lily’s character.

“I, er, I trade as much as possible in Sherwood, I don’t like to buy and sell here,” he muttered. “They’ve been… good to me, and things are… things are different here. And outside… Evan’s such a naïf, he doesn’t know what it’d do to him if I flooded the market with everything I could. He wouldn’t care, but his people would be embarrassed and… they’re not the sort… it’d be an awful mess.”

“We’ve had our differences,” Tobias said, trying for neutral, “and we’ll leave aside what I think of your… thingy—”

Seth rolled his eyes irritably.

“—But I shouldn’t have thought I’d raised a lad who’d sp—live off anyone.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Seth said witheringly. “He kept trying to make me promise I would if I had to, till I had to threaten to hit him over the head with A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions.”

“…Why?” he demanded, hand over his eyes again. If anyone had asked him why he was asking, he wouldn’t have been able to tell. He was quite sure there was not one single answer to be had that he wanted to hear.

“We were studying for our A-levels at the time; it was the largest soft-cover handy.”

“…Right.” At least the stroppy little sod only meant he’d been whacking at people with his grimoires, not with all the nasty things in them.

“Well, I could have used the Encyclopaedia of Toadstools,” Seth said defensively, as if being too merciful was the problem, “but I didn’t want to _brain_ him. I don’t mean he hasn’t got any as a rule—brains—but he wasn’t acting like it much, spouting nonsense like that, and you never know. Someone might have hexed him under the table at breakfast. He’s always been hopeless at mornings.”

“…If you say so,” Toby sighed, because the alternative was almost certainly getting more information that would make him want to slam his own head against the nearest brick wall even more. Oh, Seth might _say,_ if Toby were stupid enough to press, that he knew about the hopeless at mornings thing because of being in the same year at school, but Toby had _heard_ about the things that might go on between boys of the same year (or not) even in a _normal_ public school.

And when he’d worried about what children with too much power could get up to away from their parents, Ellie had never said anything reassuring like _Don’t talk stuff, a school that old knows all the tricks its students could ever come up with and then some,_ or _Nonsense, the teachers are all very strict and they had ways of making sure we behaved._ What she’d said was that the Headmaster had been her Housemaster and he was a kindly sort. Not reassuring in the slightest _._

Seth looked rather chuffed with himself, the brat, probably over the way Toby could feel his hair going greyer. “In any case, I just had to make sure to get a research job that’s enough like questing for the Holy Grail to pass in his family’s circles for an obsessed eccentric’s hobby-horse, instead of devoting myself to pursuits that look more like trade. I was just as pleased, anyway; it’s been nearly as good as getting paid to make real progress on curing cancer, if cancer was thought of as if it were leprosy.”

Relieved, he felt his face try to smile, only the grooves and muscle habits of a lifetime stopping it. “That what you mean by ambition, then?”

Seth slid him a sly little eye-flick. “It’ll do for a start.” He made a face. “Only I shan’t be allowed to do it anymore, and so.”

“And teaching won’t embarrass, er, his people?” he asked dubiously. If being ‘in trade’ was an embarrassment, he wouldn’t have thought being a schoolteacher would be much better, despite what the lads down their way would have thought of it. And have said, too, although possibly not to Seth’s face, since he still had that flicker of a cold look at the corner of his eyes that said he was not significantly less likely to physically try and bite a bloke’s ear off in a tight corner than he had been at thirteen.

“Hardly. If I make it through the training year and am really hired, I’d be teaching a mandatory class at _the only_ wizarding school of any repute in the empire entire. By which I mean that aside from Hogwarts there are probably a few private tutors who take on more than one pupil at once, and may in extreme cases teach out of their own sitting rooms instead of doing all home visits. It’s a class which everyone _must_ take through their O-levels and anyone who wants to be a healer or copper must excel in at A-level.”

Looking depressed, he added, “It seems I’d also be taking over for my old Housemaster, which means very nearly everyone I’ve ever met would be hounding me to death over the disposition of their future offspring.” With a sigh, “At any rate, it’s a quite exclusive post of some responsibility, and that’s very well understood, even if it’s also well understood that the exclusivity entails a certain difficulty in enforcing quality control. Witness bloody _History._ ”

“If, seems, would,” Toby noted, folding his arms.

Seth didn’t exactly grin at him, but he looked, actually, quite cheered up. “Well, yes, quite.”

He pursed his lips. “You’ll be sitting this training and buggering off, then?” he asked, but not as if he meant it. It had been an _oh good, I don’t have to be embarrassed by being related to a noodle-nob_ sort of cheered-up, not the _ah, yes, I have remembered I’m off the hook_ sort.

“I refer you to my previous commentary,” Seth drawled, “about the relative positions of world and ears, and regarding how predictable I consider the immediate to moderately near-term future to be. And, on that subject.” He pulled some sort of a short… garment out of… somewhere, and held it out. It was too heavy to be a shawl. A cape, Toby supposed.

Toby looked at it. Flatly.

Just as flatly, Seth said, “After the extent to which you’re already trusting me, balking at this is just nonsense.”

He kept looking.

Grimly, Seth said, “It’s safer to bring a non-wizard here than most places, but that doesn’t make it a good idea, and you’re wearing bloody blue jeans and I would really prefer not to press my luck. Between this and your creepy yellow baboon eyes—”

“ _Hazel,_ you cheeky little git.” His eyes had been a sore point for a while, although they weren’t now. They’d been what made Eileen notice him. Unusual colors like his were more common in the wizarding world, it seemed; she’d taken him for one of them for all of, oh, five minutes or so. He’d thought she was drunk or concussed for not quite so long as that, although he couldn’t recall now what strangely-named place she’d been imperiously asking him to direct her towards before she came over all circumspect and mysterious. She’d snapped at him for years that maybe his ‘golden’ eyes meant Seth’s magic was ‘as much your blood as mine, Tobias Snape,’ as though that was meant to make him feel better.

Her son grinned, less mysteriously than like a minor demon of wickedness, but didn’t pause. “—You can probably pass even if you do gawk like a tourist, as long as it’s only at the tourist attractions and not at everything magical we meet.”

His mouth tightened. “It must be thirty degrees out.” And sweltering with it. They’d been having heavy, lowering, sullen, sweaty days punctuated by growling thunderstorms that didn’t help so much as he’d have thought for near on a week.

Seth’s mouth tightened right back, and the cape wasn’t so much thrust at him as it floated through the air and wrapped itself around him. There weren’t any ties, but it didn’t appear to need them.

Suddenly it felt more like twenty degrees. Nothing like August at all.

Seth smiled nastily. “I’m good at temperatures,” he said sweetly.

That, Toby _did_ remember, but he managed to neither scuff his feet nor rub his bum.

Then someone else bumped into it. He turned to see a squat, pleasant-faced, rosy-cheeked little… well, a witch, it must have been, and couldn’t possibly have been anything else. She wasn’t even wearing just a short cape, it was a full, ankle-length affair that was as much like a set of mauve monk’s robes as a woman’s frock, and if her fussy, flower-bestrewn cap wasn’t anything like what a bloke might picture up against the moon on a dark night, it was decidedly pointy, in a plumply twisty, too-coy-for-her-age sort of way.

She was also beaming at Seth, where before seeing him she’d seemed more inclined to blame Toby for not moving away from the loo/tree she’d just come through than apologize for barreling into him. “Neythen, our Severus!” she exclaimed, reaching up to fuss with his waistcoat and straighten his silly grey cravat. “No one was looking to see you today!”

“Neythen, Maylis,” Seth mumbled, looking humiliated as only a twenty-year-old lad having his cheeks pinched at by a maiden aunt could, never mind that he didn’t have anything much to pinch that wouldn’t cut and Ellie had been an only child. “No, I, er, wasn’t planning on visiting.”

“And who’s this, then?” she asked, giving Toby an unabashed once-over that, if he’d been Seth’s age, would have frankly terrified him.

Seth hesitated only a moment, calculating, and then went over all courteous in a way that Toby was going to laugh himself sick over later. “Madam Maylis Dale,” he said, bowing slightly in the witch’s direction in a way she seemed to expect, “Mr. Tobias Hind.”

Toby wasn’t sure if he was more flummoxed to be introduced with his own right first name—long form, too, such as no one called him except for Ellie in a strop—or his mother’s maiden name. [1]

“Mr. Hind,” Seth was continuing, “Madam Dale is the healer attached to our local Quidditch team—you know, the Merrymen.”

“Ah, right,” Toby nodded sagely. “Good lads.” He was amused to feel a sense of relief wafting over from his lad’s direction without seeing a trace of it touch his face. As if anyone didn’t know how to talk about the footie.

Well. Seth probably didn’t, come to that. Even if he had played. And he had, had even played the normal sort a bit once he’d started playing the flying kind at school.

He’d always been _that_ sort. The sort who could, somehow, not just fail to be interested, not just fail to know how to say the right and usual things, not just start a fight by taking a position about a team or player that was unpopular in the room, but _actually get it wrong._ And more than that, so wrong as to leave everyone staring at him instead of raising their voices over his faux pas by way of leaving it (and him) behind.

“And just might have a chance at the cup next year,” the witch beamed, patting Seth on the arm in a proprietary manner, “on those new Silver Arrows. I can’t imagine what you did with them, I’m sure, but Leonard Jewkes just raves, and the boys say this year’s model’s at least twice as easy to control, and lands on a knut.”

“It’s the varnish,” Seth explained, flushing in embarrassment. Toby didn’t know why anyone would bother varnishing arrows, silver or otherwise (and what a waste of good silver, even for an archery prize, anyone of sense back in those storied days would have traded it for nonperishables that weren’t cash, one way or another, the same day or the next, before it was taxed back, and sworn blind they’d sold it for ale and pissed it away), but his attention instantly honed sharp. “And a solution to soak the bristles in. I know they say nothing can interfere with a broomstick’s enchantments but dark magic, but mine were known to do some rather funny things during games on occasion; I don’t much like relying on charms alone.”

Ah. They were still talking about the mop-footie. Not actually archery at all. He wondered whether the idiot boy had bothered to get paid for this little job of his, either. If anyone had asked him, he would have guessed not. Not if wizards felt about their flying footie the way normal people did—which Toby had gathered they did, from the way Seth had been so irritated about it before he started playing.

Not if Seth liked to think this place he hadn’t grown up in was more his home than Lancashire. Which he did seem to; he’d certainly never taken it so well when one of the biddies in their neighborhood had called him ‘our Seth.’ The boy had learned, tucked away in Ellie’s shadow, about doing for people without trying to ingratiate yourself, continuously, until they felt you’d always been one of them.

Toby had admired the hell out of her for that when he’d first brought her home. Everyone had thought she was so stuck-up and she’d been in tears every night, and no one but him had seen one trace of them. He had really, however much it had humiliated him later, when all he had to bring home was the dole he hadn’t earned and all they had to eat was the neighbors paying back her favors.

The witch shook her head and cast Toby a tolerant we-must-indulge-his-little-whims-mustn’t-we expression. Toby gave her an eh-well sort of shrug back through his retroactive alarm (he’d certainly never heard about any flying accidents!), but now her attention was fixed on him again, her eyes darting curiously from him to Seth.

“And, Maylis,” Seth said resignedly, “Mr. Hind… well, you know how it is. His wife isn’t much of a one for flowers, so I thought I’d bring a little business by.”

“You’re a good boy,” she said decisively, patting his hand while giving Toby an old-fashioned look. The shine, apparently, was off the rose. Toby was not mourning it. “Best be off with you before he closes, then.”

“So we had,” Seth agreed, glancing at the sun without bothering to explain who ‘he’ was. “Give them my best then… this way,” he added to Toby, striding away after a nod to the witch, who was already bustling off in another direction.

They passed people and shops as they hurried. Toby tried not to stare, since Seth had been trying so hard not to be worried sick about it. There were a lot of those monks-robe frocks, on the men as well as the women, although plenty of the younger folk were in, if not exactly what he’d have called normal outfits, more or less the same combination of passable clothes under a full cloak or half-cape that Toby was wearing and the Rosier-thing had come to call in.

Several of them were wearing unnervingly well-behaved cats with too-intelligent eyes draped around their shoulders, or had rats-or-mice poking out of a breast pocket, or owls perched on a shoulder or hat. One witch’s hat croaked loudly in Toby’s ear as she passed. He would have jumped a mile if he’d been alone, but of course he couldn’t let Seth see him that unnerved.

The bookshop looked nearly normal, and the stores were recognizably stores, for all their displays zipped and swooped and flashed, but he didn’t recognize half of what they passed as they made their way through an outdoor market. And, for a touch of the truly surreal, the very few who didn’t have their purchases floating alongside them and weren’t stuffing them into bags far too small to fit were tailed by meek, stunted little creatures like flap-eared Sméagols.

“House elves,” Seth said—quietly, but in a tone that made it sound as if he were discussing the weather or the price of potatoes. “Hobs, you’d say, or brownies, though the stories don’t have it quite right.”

“Obviously,” he said sourly. He’d never heard of a brownie willing to be seen, and said so.

“It’s a market day,” Seth explained. “They _don’t_ get seen by the unmagical, as a rule, and it’s true that in many households it’s a point of pride for them that the work gets done nearly as if it were doing itself. That’s not practical for errands, though. I really shouldn’t have brought you here today—the street is open to muggles quite often during the tourist season, but the locals have to do their shopping, and not just for neeps and tatties. It’s not _egregious_ , though,” he said, as though someone (not Toby) had scolded him. “It’s not as if you don’t know about wizards.”

“But you said it was a bad idea,” Toby pointed out, folding his arms. If he was needling a little, he felt it was owed him.

“It is,” Seth said flatly. “I don’t think those who’ll care would come here, and I don’t believe these people would spread my business. But reminding certain parties of where I come from and from whom, and declaring that I don’t mind and am not ashamed—yes, to be blunt, it’s nearly as bad a risk as letting things lie as they are. And that’s bad.”

Toby pursed his lips, trying to lick the taste of that off his teeth, since he couldn’t wash it down. He noted that Seth hadn’t actually _said_ he didn’t mind and wasn’t ashamed—but then, he hadn’t said the reverse, and he’d very nearly said that he was declaring it, whatever he really felt. He wanted to ask what the hell made owning him such a ‘bad risk,’ but that was a cruel question, every part of it a blow, both sides of the hearing and the telling. He’d been asked it, once. He’d refused to answer.

He refused to be the asker, now. Instead, he nodded at the hob-Gollums. “You keep one of those?”

“I live in a flat. If a family who already had one moved, the elf would come with them, but a family has to have been living in one place for a long time before the first elf will… well, probably will either be drawn to them or be born from their magic sinking into the magic of the land. No one’s really sure how that works. I don’t know if that’s because they won’t tell or because no one’s bothered to ask. Those who have nothing else should be allowed some privacy. They do have erklings together, but I haven’t personally seen any indications that it’s a mammalian-normal process. Except that they are gendered. But that could be mimicry of some sort, for all I know.”

“Oh.” He blinked. “So… are they servants, are they people, what are they?”

“Yes and yes and no one quite knows,” Seth shrugged. “My friends are all from old families who have them, and most of their elves are utter tyrants, but they’re _old retainer_ tyrants. Completely loyal, and they can’t disobey their family’s orders—magically, they can’t, and I’ve never seen one want to. Unless they get conflicting orders, which is rather horrible. They use magic in ways wizards can’t, but, well, you know children aren’t allowed to use magic out of school.”

He nodded, but a little sarcastically. He’d heard that this was a rule, but he also knew that Seth had found at least half a dozen ways to break it into splinters without getting in trouble.

“All right, it’s not permitted to _cast spells,_ ” Seth agreed with the ghost of a smirk. “Well,” he _further_ qualified, “you get one warning if you do, before you get in real trouble. And I got my warning when my friend Narcissa sent one of her elves to check up on me one year, and Cranny tried to…” his eyes flicked coldly to Toby, “to help me. Which she did, but I got a warning letter, and Narcissa helped me protest it so my record would be clean. And _my wand showed the healing spell_ the Ministry had detected. We proved it a different way, but, well… elves may serve without an option, but they’re not getting nothing out of living with wizards, I don’t think. The idea of being ‘freed’ horrifies them, _terrifies_ them, and I don’t blame them in the least. It’s not just being let go without a reference, if that were a ‘just.’ I think it’s being sacked without your _hands._ ”

Neither of them could entirely repress the shudder at that one.

“I might be wrong,” Severus added scrupulously. “The hypothesis fits the evidence, but is untested.”

“How sound is your lot on the scientific method, then?” he asked, more to change the subject than out of interest.

Looking more pathetic and woeful than he had as long as Toby could remember (neither he nor Ellie had ever given the boy the impression that whinging or puppy eyes would get him anywhere, but the Rosier-thing had looked like the sort who’d try it on, and probably be weak to it, too), Seth turned a long mask of tragedy on him and groaned, “ _Not. At. All.”_

“…Ah.”

He hadn’t really the least idea what to say to that, and they walked on in silence for a bit. No one came up to Seth and gushed like the first witch had, but Toby noticed he was getting the same amiable but unfussed oh-it’s-you looks and nods that Toby would have expected from his own friends back home, when they both had other places to be. They were the sort of looks that said _It may have been a while, but since you belong here, there’s no need to make any special effort for you; we can always catch up later._

“ _Is_ there anywhere to eat here?” he asked eventually.

“Oh, yes,” Seth said vaguely. “But it’s more important to get to Heartwood before closing; food’s easy.”

Toby sighed. “When you say ‘food’s easy,’ do you mean there are lots of restaurants open at unlikely hours, or that you can wave your stick and magic up a sarnie?”

Seth paused thoughtfully. “I suppose I could summon some apples,” he said, “although as I recall, the nearest trees are better for pies. But I meant I could, if my errand lasts past when everything’s closed even in the Wizarding area, take you back to yours or mine and cook, and then drop you back off at your lorry after.”

This was so outrageous that Toby couldn’t even find the breath to splutter. The certainty of losing first his appetite and then his meal during this process was only part of the problem. He was afraid that if he asked ‘what is wrong with you’ again, the answer he’d get would be even worse.

Perhaps fortunately for his blood pressure, it was at this point that Seth said, prosaically, “Here.”

A sweet shop was the last thing he’d been expecting, although he supposed it did explain that comment about Ellie not being one for flowers.

The place looked oddly normal compared to everything they’d walked past on the way—the proprietor had gone so far as to stick the obligatory paper badges on the walls with the names of customers who’d left money for charities. Toby even recognized some of the charities. The theme was decidedly Robin Hood, but not in any overpowering or childish way. It was the color scheme, mostly, Lincoln green against the golden wood, and that the labels and badges were cut into the famous feathered-hat shape, or bows, or quivers. Also, the bulls-eyes were colored like real archery targets and there was a kind of bark called ‘Forest Floor’ with crystalized flowers on it, a shield-shaped chocolate with a fruity red blob in the middle called Lionheart, that sort of thing.

The man behind the counter was in the grizzled-bear mold, affable barman type, about Toby’s size. He’d looked up with a hint of _why do you buggers have to come in five minutes before closing_ exasperation, but it melted into a big smile when he saw them. Seth got a, “Neythen, our Severus!” from him, too, and he came around the counter to clasp Seth’s bony wrists in his paws.

“Dickon,” Seth said softly, looking uncomfortable in an entirely different way from when the little witch had plucked at him.

The bloke had got about halfway through his puzzled look and who’s-this-then before he stopped and started staring hard between Toby’s face and Seth’s. Seth shrank into his clothes a little. No longer an affable bear, the man accused, “No.”

“This is Richard Gowan,” Seth told Toby, face blank, sounding rather miserable. “Dickon, this is me da _put that away._ ”

It wasn’t, really, anything like looking down the barrel of a gun was made to look on the telly, not even at that angle and with stony eyes behind it. Ellie had never gone that far with him, and neither had Seth after he’d started to hold himself like someone who didn’t just want to be taken seriously but knew he should be. Toby had always wondered, and never wanted to find out.

He gave the man his best What The Hell Do You Think You’re Doing warning look, but didn’t move to snatch the thing in his face away just yet. One _hint_ of a wrist-quiver and it’d be so many splinters; what kind of divvy noodle-noggin threatened a man with a slim wooden range weapon from less than five feet away? The kind who needed to learn a drop of respect for the normal ninety-nine-odd percent of the species, maybe? But presumably Toby had been brought here for a reason. Seth usually did do things for reasons (often _jawdroppingly addled_ ones, granted), when he wasn’t doing them out of pure spite and stubbornness.

“Give me one good reason,” Gowan said, eyes the frozen grey of a sky stuffed fat with snow over the ugly set of his lantern jaw. “And ‘because I’m asking’ won’t fit the bill, our Sev. If boys like you made the decisions about their parents that ought to be made for them, there’d be no room in Azkaban for the dementors.”

“How’s this, then,” Seth said, his tone cool and indifferent. “That man was a raving drunk. This one’s sober enough to hold down a job and not insult a wizard who’d taken Amberella right in front of him and had already been wearing a flowery waistcoat. And you know what muggles are like about that sort of thing.”

“I _knew_ that was a test,” Toby grumbled. He couldn’t let himself think about the rest of it. Not even about his boy agreeing _out loud_ Toby was doing better enough that it mattered to him, made a difference to him. Never mind about any of the things it meant that this stranger a hundred miles from home knew enough about their family to have opinions about it, thought he had the right to act on them. There was nothing to crawl away from the thoughts into—he couldn’t let himself, not when Ellie was relying on him to show a bit of spine, not after the things Seth had said today, and he didn’t even want to go where that would lead, not really. So he couldn’t let them gnaw at him in the first place.

“Everything’s a test,” Seth said, still coolly. “Everything. Always.” He slid his eyes towards the shopkeeper, and they said together, with the same ironic set of the mouth, “This is Slytherin.”

The shopkeeper was Toby’s age, if not older. Toby thought he _was_ older, and by a fair few years at that, considering he himself had worked too hard for too long and then spent a year or two too many drunk to have aged as well as any wizard who could do god-knew-what to ease the way for himself. The man couldn’t possibly have been at school with Seth, unless it was as a teacher, but the store didn’t look new.

He hadn’t softened by any means, but the tilt of his head was encouraging Seth to go on talking.

“Or, if you don’t like that,” Seth said, with a little shrug, “let’s try, ‘I need him right now.’”

“Oo-aye?” the wizard asked skeptically.

Toby felt a bit that way himself. “I notice we haven’t mentioned anything about laws and that,” he mentioned, keeping his voice mild, as if he were talking to Ellie in one of her pets.

They looked at him with identical expressions of slightly disgusted disbelief, and went back to their eye-duel.

He sighed, just glad Eileen hadn’t been there to see: that rules-what-rules attitude was exactly what she’d fretted about when Seth’s first letter had come back from school in a green envelope, although she’d never seemed to feel she’d explained it to him properly.

At the time, she’d been more concerned that her-father-that-bastard would instantly assume the boy was automatically a hopeless case and cut off even the half-hearted gestures of tentative reconciliation and the meager little drops of practical support that had been dribbling from that direction since the Toasted Mittens incident. Which he had, and at once, although someone had kept sneaking them useful objects of the sort a fine household would think were all used up.

Over time, though, Ellie had got worried about it herself, although by then her sullen, accusing, glowering silence had told Toby that everything wrong with his son was definitely and entirely his fault, and not magic’s. At the time, he’d considered she was being howlingly unfair.

“Yes,” Seth answered Gowan as if Toby hadn’t spoken. “I’ll be away, and things are getting dangerous out there, and you know what she’s like, she’s a grindylow for clamping onto an idea. Won’t let go if it breaks her damn fingers. She won’t even _agree to be equipped_ to protect herself, as things stand. I’ve argued myself blind, and I’ve come to the conclusion there’s no breaking the status quo unless he does it.”

Toby could almost see lightning sparking in the thunderheads. “You’re not telling me she needs anyone’s permission, a witch like that,” Gowan accused. Toby was fair lost, but he didn’t think he liked the man’s tone.

“I’m telling you,” Seth said patiently, “that she’s a mule-headed Gryff with a billywig—a bee in her bonnet, and she’s decided she’s made her bed and will, as a point of what her addlepated mane-brain calls honor, lie in it, and who else is she going to let near enough the sheets to change them?” This last was with a touch of have-a-care-how-you-answer, although it sounded as though Seth was using the threatening tone perfunctorily, more as a matter of rote obligation than as though he thought he was going to need it with Gowan.

Reassuring as that was, Toby’s head still drew back, offended. “We’re not talking about my wife, here,” he accused in turn. “You’re not talking about your mam like that.”

The wand dipped a little, pulling back slightly with a new hint of uncertainty. Toby’s eyes narrowed. He retroactively liked that fiercely protesting tone with its notes of admiration less again. Far, far less. He wanted the man to stop threatening him, of course he did, but ‘out of respect for Eileen’ was the _wrong reason._

“For pity’s sake,” Seth snapped at him distractingly, “what else d’you think I’d go to this sort of trouble for? I assure you, there is _nothing_ I could need to do for my friends that could _possibly_ necessitate putting myself in the way of one of your wobblers.”

“You did Friday last,” Toby pointed out reasonably, since objecting to ‘wobblers’ would only sound childish enough to deserve it.

“…No, I didn’t,” he said sullenly. “That was damage control, it wasn’t my idea. That is, it was my idea, obviously, but I’d been put in a position where there really wasn’t anything else to do that would have worked. And anyway, I didn’t need you to _do_ anything; everyone would have expected you both to deny everything anyway.”

Gowan had been in a bit of a holding pattern, but now he looked like someone who was pausing to re-evaluate. More shrewdly than a bear ought. “Then that rumor I heard recently…”

“Er,” Seth admitted, with a more sheepish face than he’d ever put on for Toby. Whose fingers seemed to be curving in a shape that would have fit nicely around the handle of a jug glass. Toby (and Eileen) had objected (loudly) to the idea of Seth’s telling anyone he’d fallen back into old habits, but purely out of indignation. He hadn’t expected it to land him in _trouble._

The candyman sighed, and leaned back against the counter, seeming far less likely to punch through Toby’s face or curse him in the heart. He even put the wand away. “What sort of a mess are you _in,_ lad?”

“The sort where you wake up in the middle of the night and think instigating a minor bureaucratic nightmare to inveigle a stiff-necked, magic-hating muggle into the Sherwood is a brilliant answer to one of the smaller-but-itchier tangles in it?” Seth replied. His voice made it a question, but his face made it an apology, if not an actual cringe.

Toby hadn’t been called a muggle to his face since Seth was a burning-eyed, knob-wristed, paper-faced, shirty fifteen even the pretty-pretty Evans girl couldn’t control, never mind Eileen.

That summer had been the worst one and the last; Seth had found himself a summer job with room and board the next year, thank Christ, and they’d wanted him back the year after. Toby hadn’t felt called on to say that wanting Seth back was hard to credit, since the lad hadn’t been home when he found out. If there was one way Seth had always been not just all he could have asked but in a way he could explain to his mates, it was in being a hard worker.

At least, when the work caught his interest. Laundry as washed by Seth was subjected to experimental or prehistoric procedures that were generally rather hard on it, or done perfunctorily and spottily, and was hung up to dry all right but then not folded unless you stood over him. Which was a waste of everybody’s time, since he’d done it so badly, until the time he’d snarled, opened a pen-knife with an impatient flip any street tough Toby’d ever met would have taken seriously, and carved a handful of runes onto the bottom of the laundry basket. After which everything tossed into it had, to Toby’s reluctantly impressed furious depression, neatly folded itself.

But that summer had been the worst one, and Toby had, in some desperation, spent most of it answering all of the unveiled contempt by calling him Snow White back, pretending to think he’d been borrowing the girl’s lipstick or stealing her stuck-up sister’s.

He would have been so pleased if Seth (who had not, in fact, even been lining his eyes like some of the other lads his age who listened to music even more dreadful than he did) had just smirked or blushed-and-muttered about how that wasn’t how he was getting Lily’s lipstick on him, like a normal boy. But it had gotten his goat good and proper the first time, so of course Toby’d had to keep on with it.

And everything he’d worried about had turned out even worse than he’d thought, although apparently over on the Other Side of the Invisible Line they didn’t give a toss or even turn a hair.

As if to prove it, the man said, droll, “What is it that dish of posh nosh of yours—”

“ _Dickon!”_ Seth howled before Toby could even choke.

“Oh, all right, that posh _bloke_ of yours—”

“ _Thank_ you _. Ugh._ ”

Gowan rolled his eyes tolerantly. “What is it he calls you again? Grievous Bodily Harm?”

“Blunt Force Trauma,” Seth said sulkily. Defensively, he added, “Sometimes he says Precision Corkscrew.”

“And means it?”

The scowling silence was as clear a ‘no’ as Seth could ever have grumbled out loud.

“Well, far be it from me to spoil your reputation with the Johnnies,” Gowan said affably, patting him commiseratingly on the shoulder. “I’m sure you worked hard for it.”

“Johnnies?” Toby eyebrowed.

“King-Johns, John’s men. Wizards from outside. Who think the Ministry is…” Seth paused. “The feeling among the Nottingham and Sherwood witches and wizards,” he tried again, delicately, “is that it’s not polite to laugh in the Ministry’s faces, and that while graft and other corruptions are inevitable in government, as long as taxes seem to be going _mostly_ towards education and the hospital and so on, these are worthy causes with which the community should, as patriots who do use those services at need, cooperate.”

“And what do you call yourselves?” he asked Gowan, looking around at the hat-and-bow shaped labels and the sunshine-on-leaves colors of the shop and wondering if it was going to be Greenies or Hoodies, since ‘merry men’ was apparently taken.

He got an are-you-thick stare. “Brits.”

“Ah.”

Seth shot his bear-friend a mildly dirty look, and told Toby, “Foresters.” It sounded more like ‘fosters,’ really, but Toby could, just, hear the R he’d glided over.

“Some of the younger city lads have started calling themselves Notties,” Gowan relented, but he was, very clearly, bending purely to Seth.

Who made one of his more spectacular revolted faces.  “Oh, dear god. Gryffs?”

Toby was sure that he _had_ seen that face since it had been about sprouts.

—He’d recommended Ellie not give into the boy at all on that one, on principle and to avoid setting a precedent. He’d had to admit that roasted had been better, though, and the house had certainly been a nicer-smelling place to come home to after a good, long day’s loom-tuning, especially since by the time the lad was on solids and old enough to have opinions about them (other than ‘this is new, I don’t trust it,’ which had been not just normal but an inflexible constant until raw radishes (which Mrs. Evans ought not to have let him try, even if she hadn’t thought he’d like them, because she should have known he was contrary and they were too dear even to be thought of, and Seth couldn’t even grow weeds, just hadn’t the knack), because Seth had been touched in the head even when he was young enough for it to have been cute) the musty mold and termites had already started creeping through the mill. It was a wonder the old barn had burned before collapsing on all their heads, really. He could still remember the not-quite-right smell of the place. Roast sprouts had been a better smell to come home to after a day of it than boiled, but he still didn’t think Ellie should have humored the boy.

He must have seen that face since then, and vaguely thought he did remember seeing it on an older Seth, but he couldn’t recall when.

“Mostly. One or two Ravens and Puffies, along for the excitement, I think. A few years above you, mostly, some a bit older than that.”

“I could guess,” Seth said grimly. “Why is it always _gangs,_ with Gryffs?”

“Because armies would need plate-mail, our Sev, and that’s a right bugger to have fitted.”

Surprised, Seth laughed, just a bit. “True enough.”

The Evans girl had also called him that, but it had taken a few summers after Toby had first met her before it had been “May Sev please come out and play with me?” instead of “K’nSefcoompleeywifme?” Which he’d frankly preferred, even if he’d barely understood one word in ten. Or possibly twenty. Hard to tell, the way she’d jabbered on like bobbins rattling loose in a pan at that age. But Gowan didn’t mean it like that, like ‘Seth’ come out Scouse, although the way he talked, he might have.

He didn’t, and Toby wasn’t just assuming. He could hear the difference, a faint needling emphasis directed at him, Toby. He was trying not to decide whether he thought it was more challenging or possessive, since once he did he’d have to react to it and then he’d lose even if he won. Seth had even come right out and _said_ ‘everything’s a test,’ and you couldn’t ask for clearer than that.

He didn’t have to like it, mind. Whether or not he was meant to. Which didn’t matter, because he didn’t mind meeting Seth halfway—even if what that really meant was ‘not objecting to being kidnapped.’ Toby didn’t believe for half a second that Seth really thought he needed anyone but himself to protect Eileen, even if he really thought she needed it, so putting himself out to involve Toby at all _was_ a gesture, even if he was being a sidewinding, jackrabbity collection of nettles and thornbushes about it, as usual. So Toby could keep his peace and play along.

But by the same token, he hadn’t been the one to start making digs (he didn’t think. Had he? Seth probably thought he had. But he didn’t think so), and he’d lost his whole day to this nonsense. So if Seth thought he was going to be _grateful,_ the snippy little git had another think coming.

Seth wasn’t snippy with Gowan, though. He was looking at the man quite seriously, and saying, “Speaking of fittings.”

“No need for that,” Gowan assured him. “Of course, it would be _better_ if you could persuade her to come by, but, well.”

Toby eyed him suspiciously.

“No, I should think I’ll have a difficult enough time persuading her to take one if he,” Seth nodded to Toby, “tells her he can live with it. I was hoping that if you knew what kind she used to have…?”

“I can look it up, if you don’t know,” Gowan assured him. “I didn’t make hers, it would have been me da or Aunt Bess, but it’ll be in the records. There’s no guaranteeing that a new one of the same description will work for her, though. Sometimes it’s the combination, aye, but they do the choosing, you know. And besides, she’ll not be the same as she was at eleven, when her old one chose her.”

“No, I know,” Seth agreed, “but it’s worth a try, and at least she can call the bus if she’s holding one. But I didn’t just come for hers, as it happens.”

Gowan turned an unimpressed _I beg your pardon_ look on him, and demanded, “Beg pardon?”

“What exactly are we talking about?” Toby broke in, completely exasperated.

It looked as though Gowan was about to give him a perfunctory answer, but then the grey eyes snagged on Seth’s face, so Toby looked, too.

At pure, sparkling, cut-obsidian mischief.

“…No,” Gowan said again, but rather helplessly.

“Oh, come,” Seth said wickedly, more tempting than pleading. “A muggle in your backroom. No one else in history, most like. How could you _possibly_ slap the Ministry in the face more than that, and if they ever charged you with it, he _already knows about us,_ so it’s technically no breach of the Statute at all. You could make the popinjays burst like _frogs_ , if you wanted. And you’d have a cast-iron argument against prejudice on the one side, _and_ if you had to, on the other, you could spin it as the cruelest muggle-baiting _since Minos_.”

Gowan stared at him, even more helplessly, and scrubbed a hand down his face.

“The phrase you’re looking for,” Toby said helpfully, again in that place where he didn’t know what the hell was going on except that he knew _exactly_ what was going on, “is, ‘Son, what is _wrong_ with you.’”

Now Gowan stared at him, and then his shoulders slumped ruefully. “Actually,” he said, “I think the phrase I was looking for is ‘Salazar save us all from cobras with a sense of humor.’”

“ _I_ think the phrase you were looking for,” Seth said smugly, before Toby could ask why all Seth’s friends were obsessed with cobras, “is, ‘Blunt force trauma, my arse.’”

Toby winced. “I’m somehow going to forget you said that,” he prayed. Seth glared a glare at him that only partially meant an edict of _without alcoholic assistance_ (unnecessary), being mostly made of _you fuck off out of my private life right now_ (outrageous).

“And it really wasn’t,” Gowan said dryly. “Words cannot _express_ how much it wasn’t. I may send your lad a card congratulating him on his perception.”

Seth lifted his chin and folded his arms. “He’ll conclude you’re congratulating him on his good taste,” he sniffed.

Gowan rolled his eyes tolerantly. “I suppose he would at that. Oh, all right, then. Just turn the closed sign, will you, while you’re spinning everything else on its head? It was time anyway.”

Looking both unreasonably and incomprehensibly pleased with himself, Seth did. He beckoned Toby to follow Gowan through the one thing in the shop that wasn’t green, gold, or made of sugar: a perfectly ordinary industrial-grey metal door behind the counter, unlocked with a bog-standard steel key with (Toby sighed to himself) a green cap on.

The green-and-amber theme continued in the back, but there wasn’t any more chocolate. Just shelves and shelves of long, thin boxes, about the size you’d put a necktie in but deeper, a couple of cabinets stuffed with tins and jars in the back, and a carpenter’s workbench with a wood-turning machine and a scattering of gleaming metal tools in sloppy piles of sawdust.

Now it was Toby’s turn, looking at the slender length of wood on the machine, in the middle of being drilled down the center, to groan, “Oh, no.”

Seth gave him the wicked sparkling mischief look, and this time he was actually grinning. Sharply, actually. Maybe he _had_ been Jack the Ripper, last life. “You’re going to give it to her with your own hands,” he promised darkly.

“We get by _fine,_ ” Toby sighed, cupping the back of his neck to stretch it pre-emptively, trying to ward off the headache.

Losing the sparkle, Seth said curtly, “I told you, things are getting dangerous, and I’m not as low profile as I’d like. Which means neither of you are, either. You _will_ make her take it, and keep it on her. I don’t care if she ever uses it, as long as she has it to hand just in case.”

“What things, dangerous?” Gowan asked, his attention honing.

Seth shot him an annoyed look. “Christ, Dickon, just because the Prophet’s a tool of the Ministry’s no reason not to read it. You ought to know what they want you to think.”

Toby put on his blandest face and started whistling [Working Class Hero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKwXwU5iWs).

Seth looked coldly at him, which was unexpectedly unnerving, and very deliberately turned back to the other man. “Don’t you know people have been disappearing?” he asked. “Without a trace. Muggleborns. Blood-traitors. I’d like to dream that Mam’s got some protection because of the friends I have, because I’ve been careful about never asking for favors yet, and I more honestly think she really might because she’s dropped out of the wizarding world, but I _won’t_ rely on it. She might just be the _platonic ideal_ of a blood-traitor, between Da and helping out the muggle neighbors, except for keeping herself to herself and not making herself a spectacle publishing indignant screeds in the paper.”

Before Toby could embark on his own indignant screed, Seth turned back to him and curtly explained, or at least said, “It’s a technical term.”

“Oh, it is not,” Gowan said wearily. Toby had the sense not so much that he’d found himself in the middle of a pre-existing conversation of theirs as in the middle of a script that everyone but him knew by heart, whose lines they were whizzing past because no one could be bothered to actually say them aloud anymore.

“All right,” Seth conceded, “it’s a slur that doesn’t have a polite equivalent and is therefore, regrettably, doing double duty as a technical term.”

“Either way, you ought to be the last one to use it, our Sev,” Gowan said reproachfully. Toby got the feeling, somehow, that he was, somehow, this time, doing it _even more on purpose._

“Not if I want to keep enough credibility in the right quarters to keep Mam and Lily safe, I oughtn’t,” he retorted, adding with a reproachful look, “What kind of serpent _are_ you?”

“Desert kingsnake,” Gowan replied at once, unruffled.

This seemed to be an impressive answer for some reason, because Seth’s _oh_ was, if not exactly cowed or even subdued, rather taken aback and blinkish. He recovered quickly, though, and said with the same reproachful note, “Well, a Slytherin named for a snake known for playing dead should understand about protective coloration.”

Gowan looked pointedly around his backroom filled with, presumably, wand-boxes, and then out into his sweet shop. “I’m more surprised to hear that a spitter’s even heard the term.”

Seth looked at him calculatingly, eyes hooded, and then, very deliberately, stuck out his tongue. Gowan laughed, and then made a comment that didn’t make any sense at all about how the way Seth was dressed unsuitably somehow should have given him, Gowan, a hint. And didn’t say a hint about what.

Toby decided being patient wasn’t doing him any good, and wandered over to look at the cabinets. The one with the tins seemed to just be tea, tea, more tea, and a few books he couldn’t make his eyes focus on to read their spines (which was _exactly_ what he hated about wizards, though there were plenty of things he could have said that about), but the other was more what he’d expected. Its jars were full of things that had been powdered, shredded, or chopped to the size of new peas, and their labels said things like Unicorn Hair, Manticore Sting, Sphinx Feather, Mokeskin, Ashwinder Shell, Salamander Scale, and on, and on. Only about half the names were monsters he knew.

Then there started to be _zzzp!_ noises behind him. He whipped around, and was roaring, “What the HELL are you doing,” even before he’d seen Gowan measuring the base of Seth’s nose. Well, his first thought was to say Gowan was doing it, but actually the measuring tape was moving about by itself while Gowan was laying out a roll of wooden dowels on a table.

“Er,” Seth squirmed. As well he might.

“Standard practice,” Gowan informed him, impatient and a bit superior.

“For WHAT,” he demanded, fists on his hips.

Seth sighed. “I said I was going away for a bit,” he said in a prompting tone.

“You snuck it in there sidewise,” Toby corrected, uncompromisingly folding his arms.

Oddly, or, perhaps, depressingly, they both looked just a bit pleased with him. “If you like,” Seth said, not quite as snottily as he might have. “In any case, I am, and I’d feel better about it with a reserve wand tucked away. Just in case.”

Toby glared at him. “And you think bringing me there to watch you get one is going to make me feel better about it all, do you?” he mocked.

“Of course I do,” Seth returned, somewhere between savage good cheer and snappish return mockery. “Magic is an art that you don’t understand, isn’t that right? But ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’”

“And the devil can quote scripture to his purpose,” Toby fired back, narrowing his eyes. He wasn’t letting Seth just get away with tossing the greats at him as if they’d been in some cozy book club together all these years. If the little sod threw in Clarke’s second law as well as the third, something was getting chucked at his head, wands or no wands.

Seth narrowed his own eyes back. “You couldn’t build a telly, could you. Or explain vacuum tubes, or what makes the hoover suck and turn off, or how electricity moves the metal and the signals, or why the waves sent through the wires or what-have-you resolve into sound and pictures. It might as well be magic, but we call it science and you live with it and you’re comfortable with it, so you call it technology and you don’t have a problem. Well, call magic a genetic trait that gives me access to an energy whose particle science hasn’t named yet, watch the engineer design the admittedly rather medieval tool that facilitates its manipulation, and belt up.”

His mouth curling unwillingly at one corner, Toby reminded him, “I work _for the library,_ you snippety little git. Meaning, we have one now.” He could find out about bloody outdated vacuum tubes any time he didn’t have anything better to do, thank you.

“…Well, yes, but muggles keep on publishing fiction,” Seth explained his assumption, unabashed.

“I’ll send you How It Works for your next birthday, shall I?” he asked drolly. “All twenty-one volumes.” It wasn’t much of a threat, but then, he couldn’t afford to go through with it. But then again, it didn’t matter what the threat was when the tone was there.

“You do and I’ll send you all my old potions journals _and_ make Evan paint nightmarish amalgamations of technology and Albrecht Dürer,” Seth fired back predictably, as if he wouldn’t have quite happily lost a month to sitting down and reading through the thing first cover to last if Toby did send it to him. “Moving ones. And stick them to your bedroom walls with Permanent Sticking Charms. Half the journals are written in Chinese or German, and the other half are liberally scattered with Futhark.”

“I think we may be moving towards muggle-baiting, our Severus,” Gowan said mildly.

Having briefly forgotten him, Toby started, but was pleased to see Seth blink a bit, too. He was then entertained by Seth’s attempt to explain that it couldn’t be muggle-baiting (because baiting was categorically to be applied only to helpless persons) without either bringing up the past or explicitly explaining that the reason Toby wasn’t helpless now was that he could always rat on Seth to his mam.

Ellie could shrivel the boy into a sullen prune with one look when she felt it called for. From halfway across the country, if necessary. Quite often without bothering to buy a stamp.

It didn’t go well, and the measuring tape kept zipping around him all the while.

Taking pity, losing interest, or disliking to hear Seth dance around the topic of his mam, Gowan eventually took the lad by the arm and manhandled him over to the table with the roll of dowels. “D’you remember this bit?” he asked.

“The rods are from different sorts of trees,” Seth told Toby, possibly by way of answering. “In Celtic and Druidical lore, and in the old language of Ogham, each type of tree is associated with certain—or, in this context, I suppose I might say _resonates_ with certain qualities and magics. Each will work better for some people than others. Just as hearing people might have perfect pitch or be tone deaf or neither, wizards can be more or less sensitive to this sort of thing, so when a witch or wizard comes in for a wand, Dickon has them see if any of the wooden rods feel better than others. I understand that Ollivander doesn’t, in London, though.”

Gowan made a face, with a flared nostril. “Ollivander just shoves wands at people until one of them works. Oh, he measures, but he says he can _feel_ what’s right. Load of rubbish, in my opinion. If he could feel it, he’d be able to give a witch or wizard the wand that’s chosen them straightaway, or at least narrow down the wood or core or _something._ But it can take more’n an hour, they tell me, and as far as his customers can tell he’s just grabbing any old thing off the shelves.”

Seth slowly loosed a curling little smile, eyes gleaming. “Maybe I’ll find out one day,” he mused, “and let you know.”

“Don’t you think on it,” Gowan scolded sternly. “He only sells three cores, and not a one of them would be right for you, and besides, all his wands have the Trace. He’s well in the Ministry’s pocket.”

The smile widened. “That’s what I mean.”

Gowan slid him a disturbed look. “You mind what games you play, our Naj,” he warned, which only made Seth smile even wider and more curlingly. “Now, just you give your attention to what you’re doing, my lad, _if_ you please.”

Seth’s eyes crinkled, and then he pulled a mocking contrite face and, sobering, did. He stroked his fingers lightly over the dowels, occasionally nudging one forward or drawing back suddenly as though stung.

When he pushed the last rod forward, Gowan said flatly, “You never.”

Seth looked puzzled. “Why not?”

“I only put that in for completeness. How did it feel?”

Still puzzled, and now a bit suspicious, Seth said slowly, “Warm. A bit… cat having a kip in the sun, in a bit of a stupor, but pleasant, welcoming. Not what I’d call _responsive,_ not like, say, these,” he touched a few of the others he’d indicated, “but… why, what is it?”

“Apple,” Gowan said, in the same flat, disbelieving tone.

“It is not,” Seth spat. When Gowan’s silence said yes, it was, he hiked up his shoulders like a cat who was not in the sun but had just been threatened with a bath. He hissed, “You can stop looking at my nose _right this instant_ and if you tell Ev about this _I will end you._ Or his mother. _God._ _And don’t you look at my feet either. Or anywhere else. Thank you very much._ In fact, give me my cloak back,” he snapped at Toby, and snapped his wand, too. The cape whipped away and sailed through the air to curl around his shoulders. It then proceeded to grow into a full-length one.

“It’s to do with truth, peace, memory, and transformation, too,” Gowan offered, voice trembling behind the side of his hand he’d nearly stuffed into his mouth.

“ _Fuck off._ ”

“Ruling out peace, then,” he murmured.

“ _Right off!”_

“How much does this conversation have to do with Aphrodite winning that beauty contest, then?” Toby asked, only sort of under his breath.

“Let me put it this way,” Gowan said. “Did Ms. Eileen ever tell you what a squib is?”

Tabling his disapproval of what he felt was an inappropriately familiar way to refer to _his wife,_ he replied, “Other than an explosive? Yes.” She’d told him in the context of _My arsehole father’s cut me off with a shilling because any or all of our babies might be one._ He knew perfectly well what a squib load was, too, but wasn’t going to admit it. Even if the word _did_ also mean a firearm malfunction, he’d rather enjoyed, at the time, the idea that he and Ellie might pop out a little load of miniature dynamite.

They had, in fact, and it hadn’t been much fun for anyone once he’d turned out not to be the so-called-malfunctioning sort.

“Well, there was one from Switzerland who I understand was rather well known among the muggles. Bloke named Carl Young?”

Toby nodded, cautiously and a bit skeptically. From what he’d heard about Jung he would have suspected drugs, but he supposed insanity due to being raised by wizards also made sense.

“Talked about how all humans have a sort of… if everyone’s mind is its own lake, they all feed into a great ocean of pooled ideas, sort of thing?”

He nodded again, more because Seth was sulking rather than arguing than because he himself knew what the bloke was talking about.

“Well, he thought magic worked like that—sort of, works the way it does because of the ideas people have. Not that it works because we think it should, you understand,” Gowan explained, “but that our stories give it shape, over the centuries.”

“…So this conversation has everything to do with Aphrodite,” Toby concluded glumly, “and you’re both surprised because the apple wood felt different to Seth when he were a lad.”

“Stung him like a wasp,” Gowan confirmed cheerfully.

“Sod off and _rot,_ ” Seth continued to sulk.

Toby would definitely not be telling the Rosier-thing. Or its mum. He might be able to bring himself to tell Eileen, but he might really, _really_ need to at least be a _little_ drunk first. Biting the bullet, he stuck out his chin and asked Gowan, “What do you think of, er, the, er, the ginger, then?”

“Oh, well done,” Seth muttered sourly, folding his arms and hiking his shoulders up even more, like a moulting pigeon, but Toby thought he _had,_ in fact, been as diplomatic as could have been expected of him and more.

Gowan looked taken aback and bemused. “Who, Rosier? Wearrlll…” he considered. “It pains me to see a good Northern lad stepping out with a bloke who rhymes ‘thank you’ with ‘hanky,’ I don’t mind telling you, and his family has more issues than Witch Weekly. But he’s got a reputation among those who know and don’t speak for being a touch cannier and more sensible than he lets on, and you’ve only to talk to him five minutes to know the only two things he cares about are—”

His voice was cut off by a buzzing noise, like a whole hive of bees swarming placidly a little ways off. When Toby looked around in confusion, Seth was glaring even harder with his shoulders even higher, defiant, his face rather red.

“Ah,” Toby uttered understandingly.

“Know and don’t speak my eye,” Seth snarled, the buzz dying away. “I came for wands, Dickon, not to have my allies’ secrets betrayed.”

“He don’t make much of a secret of it, Severus,” Gowan said, amused.

“ _If_ he were more than he lets on, it’s not particularly good manners—” Seth began heatedly. Toby interrupted him with a snort for Seth lecturing anybody on good manners.

“A man wants to know whether his child’s being taken for granted or taken advantage of,” Gowan said, unmoved.

Or, more likely after seeing them together, taking advantage of an unworthy innocent he secretly despised, Toby might have added, but didn’t. Everything else about the whole thing was awful, but at least he didn’t seem to have to worry about _that._ And he hadn’t, really; it wasn’t as if Seth had the patience to pretend he cared for anyone he loathed long enough to hook them, even if he went briefly mad enough to think he’d be able to stand someone he thought was an idiot for longer than thirty seconds put together. Toby was more concerned about the Rosier-thing being shallow, which it might or might not be, and perverted, which it patently was.

“Yes,” Seth sneered, “he very villainously refuses to let me do any of the tidying-up and made me sign a contract in blood to index my never-more-than-fifty percentage of the rent with my salary.”

They stared at him.

Irritably, he said, “Not really in blood.”

“Well, it might have been, with you people,” Toby pointed out, dry.

Gowan snorted, and said, “Actually, it might have been, with _his_ people.”

“Yes, well, with Evan it was with blackberry sauce out of a pastry bag onto a pancake the size of his head,” Seth said, still irritably. “Possibly even the size of his ego. And then he covered it with whipped cream ‘to seal it in,’ and ate it. So I couldn’t sneak in alterations, he said. Never mind that eating it meant he would subsequently be unable to produce the contract, he said that We Would Both Know, which, alas, is true. And thus, with my damnable _honesty_ unsuitable to a Slytherin, the affinity with the apple-wood is explained to _everyone’s satisfaction I'm sure_ , so may I have a reserve wand now?”

“Your son,” Toby said later (it must have been near on ten o’clock), “is a sneaking, slippery, unscrupulous, conniving, kidnapping, bullying little con artist.”

“I told you what it meant when he was writing home in green envelopes and wearing green scarves ten years ago, Tobias Snape,” Eileen said irritably, stepping back from the door with the flames of the oil lamp softening the long lines of her face and rewriting her inky eyes in gilt. She was wearing that nightgown he liked under her dressing gown, the red one. He had, with great effort, managed not to find out whose it had been before hers, and with great restraint managed not to ask her how she’d turned it red. He knew she’d tell him she’d dyed it, but he had trouble believing anything that grew could really make a red so bright as that without help from chemicals or magic or that beetle juice they put in food these days. She couldn’t have afforded the former, and if it was either of the latter he didn’t want to know.

“You also said it was probably prejudice,” he reminded her. “I’m here to tell you it is no such thing, El. Stone fact, chiseled in, and proud with it.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, kidnapping?”

He explained about Seth mucking Central Processing about.

She looked frightened, which scared him, and demanded, “Did he say he counfounded them or used Imperius or what?”

“Said he mesmerized them,” he told her, and then tried, “Hypnotized,” and then had to explain in more detail. And then had to deal with the fuss she made over Seth’s doing ‘wandless magic,’ in public, despite the fact he’d been doing it since he was four and doing it on purpose and _with_ purpose since he was probably six or eight or so, and despite his having told Toby it _wasn’t_ magic this time. Ellie loudly scoffed both at that idea and at the idea that it was nothing much to do it on purpose. Of course, she was the lad’s mother; you had to expect it now and again, when Seth wasn’t there to hear her and get a swelled head from it.

“But what was he about, leading you about by the nose like that?” she asked, baffled, setting the tea tray down.

“Wanted to introduce me to your man down in Nottingham,” he said casually, stretching out on the sofa. He didn’t give it the twist of his voice that would have made it an accusation rather than an ordinary turn of phrase, but he watched her for signs of beflusterment anyway. Gowan had acted more like a man carrying a torch than one who’d ever had an affair, right enough, but you never knew, and Lord knew Toby’d given Ellie enough reason to at least think about jumping ship, back when he was sunk in the misery to his eyes.

She frowned, not angrily, and admitted, “Well, I did go that way once or twice after I first got our Very his school things, when one of the neighbors was very bad and I couldn’t just go out into Bowden or one of those fine ladies’ gardens and pick what I needed. It was Very who went down as often as he could get away and find the port-tree in the part of the Sherwood near us. He used to trade his little potions and garden wines with the shopkeepers for stationary and Christmas presents for his school friends and that. I wasn’t there often enough to make friends, myself. Can’t say as I know who you mean.”

“The lad still does that,” Toby said drolly. “I make it he’d be doing a right good business if he were taking their money. Must want to live there someday, ‘sall I can think. Any road, you may not think you have friends, but I think the candyman’s a bit sweet on you.”

She blinked. “What, at Heartwood?” He raised his eyebrows at her over his tea. She thought about it, and then raised hers back, and her chin, too, and threw back a shoulder. “And why shouldn’t he be?” she demanded.

He grinned, and lifted his tea to her. “Suppose he did seem sensible enough,” he allowed. “Down to earth bloke, for all I take it that on the quiet he’s as much of an underhanded snake-in-the-grass as Seth likes to think he is.”

“Is he, now,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose that explains why he’s kept on—but why would Very bring you there?” she asked sharply, belatedly suspicious.

One of the bad things about the drink that he’d even realized was a problem at the time, he reflected, was that for years, everyone in his house had been not only sharper but swifter than him. Seth’s smart mouth was part of what had driven him to it in the first place, of course, but he’d never felt _Eileen_ was running circles around him until he was well and truly pickled.

“Says he’ll be on the continent for the rest of the month, and in Scotland after that and won’t be able to get away much,” he grunted, and reluctantly reached for his bag. “Reckoned you ought to have this. He were right fraught about it, tell you the truth.” Still reluctantly, and probably ungraciously, he shoved the green and amber box at her.

She took it, staring, as if it were made of soap bubbles and might explode. “That’s never,” she said, trying for flat and dismissive and only managing uncertain. “You’d never.”

“Well, I thought about it,” Toby told her. “He’s always been all nerves and nose, right enough, but what was he jumpy about? Getting thumped and shouted at for things that damn _right_ he was going to get thumped and shouted at for them. Walking down the streets you _don’t_ walk down unless you can handle yourself. Setting off folks as _did_ have short fuses. I don’t recall him ever once being frit of a monster under the bed or a ghost in the wood, or having that same sort of hysterics just because he didn’t like it when your knitting friends fussed at him and pinched his face, like Davey Cheetham down the way.”

She gave him the Are You Going To Stop Jabbering And Talk Sense And Get To The Point Sometime This Century cross and impatient look.

He explained, “It’s his way to make things worse for himself, Ellie, but if he says he won’t sleep nights unless you’ve got a gun under your bed, I’m inclined to think we may as well think on it as a sensible precaution.”

She went back to uncertain, with a healthy dose of skepticism mixed in (he didn’t blame her), and said, “If this is to do with that nonsense he and that Rosier boy were spouting about Lily Evans—it didn’t even make _sense._ ”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Toby said. “I only caught the gist of it, mind, but as I understand it, something’s a bit sinister’s going on with your lot. People disappearing. Seth told Gowan you were just the sort, even though maybe you weren’t because Seth has friends—which sounds bloody dodgy, if you ask me—and because you’ve dropped out of their circles completely. Used the word ‘blood-traitor.’”

Ellie went white, at least half with fury, and sat down.

“Said the word was a slur doing double duty as a technical term for lack of anything nicer to say,” he offered, and nudged her teacup at her.

“I suppose it is that,” she said, still thin-lipped. She looked down at the box again. “But you don’t want me to have this,” she declared, bristling with pre-emptive self defense. And didn’t say _You broke mine,_ much less _You snapped mine in front of my face and threw it in the fire._

“Can’t say it’s at the top of my Top Ten list of Things I’ve Been Hankering To See About The House,” he agreed levelly, and drank his tea.

Bristling more, she snapped, “I said I’d live muggle-enough when I married you, and I meant it. And when you… when I lost the use of my old one, I decided, _myself, I decided_ I could live without it, and would. Besides, if he’s right that not using magic’s keeping me safe, the Ministry can tell when magic’s suddenly getting used in a place it usually isn’t. And if we start getting things done too conveniently, if the chores don’t take long enough, the neighbors will notice, believe you me.”

“I’m not suggesting you should use it to make the beds and sweep the floor like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” he said, still levelly. “I’d much rather you didn’t, matter of fact. Only, he may overreact about absolutely everything, but I don’t think he gets the wind up about nothing at all, and you’re the one who used to tell me a bread knife wouldn’t be much use against your sort.”

Then he sighed. What Ellie seemed to be taking from this wasn’t so much that things could well be so bad that even he was willing to have a damned wand in the house as that he’d put a wand into her hands. From her expression, this was going to work out well for him in the short term, at least, so there was that to look forward to, but he felt it also meant she wasn’t really paying attention.

“It probably won’t even work,” she said, hands caressing the amber ribbon. “It’s not like ordering from the milkman, one bottle, pat of butter, half a round of cheese. The wand chooses the witch. Even if he made it just like my old one…”

“I think he was going to,” Toby mentioned, “and then Seth kicked up a fuss. _Just_ like him,” he added dourly.

“Ten inches,” she murmured, pulling the ribbon open slowly, as if she were the one who’d been hypnotized, “rowan and thestral wingbone, very stiff.”

“That’s what they said, exactly, except for the rowan,” Toby said. “That was what Seth spat out his dummy about. Said rowan was ‘a seeker’s wood for questers and young girls with stars in their eyes,’ wouldn’t do anymore.”

She paused with her hand ready to pull off the top of the box, looking unsettled. “What else did he say?”

“Said you’d been through the storms and were apt to dig your heels in and stay where you were,” Toby said resentfully, not adding that Seth had put in _whether she ought to or not,_ “and you mix with your friends but you’re never quite one of them and so it ought to be holly.”

“And is it?” she asked warily.

“How am I supposed to know?” he demanded grumpily. “It’s a _stick._ ”

“Well, what did Gowan _say?”_ she demanded back, cross.

“Said Seth probably knew his own mam best,” he conceded, more grumpily. “Said it was a good wood for defense.”

Slowly, she lifted the top off the box, revealing a long, cream-colored stick that curved and kinked at the base—very nearly the way a gun did, actually, only more decorative. Even Toby could see that it was designed to compensate for the way wrists worked, so that a woman who hadn’t held one in a long time wouldn’t have to twist her arm to aim properly.

Her face was unreadable as she looked at it, and then hard as she looked at him. “Give it to me,” she said.

His mouth went tight, remembering Seth predicting this. But he’d already made his decision, and whatever she thought, it didn’t have anything to do with owing her or anything like that. The boy was a trouble-magnet and had more than enough experience to know it when he smelled it, and that was that. And it helped him that she’d come to the door wearing that nightie, just because he’d had a long day, and that at least some of that look in her eyes wasn’t just _you owe me this_ but _I want to see what will happen when you touch it, Golden-eyes, he’s your blood as much as mine._

He took the stick out of the box, but for all of him it was just a stick, and (some comfort) she looked just a bit disappointed, not triumphant or superior at all.

Until he passed it to her. Then gold and black sparks washed up and down her arms, without her so much as waving the thing, and her breath caught and her eyes caught fire.

He held very still, waiting for anything to happen. When it didn’t, he waited for her to come back to herself, and then met her eyes. Levelly, he said, “Just self-defense, Ellie.”

She looked like she was trying to argue with him, but wasn’t finding the words for it.

“That’s what you just said,” he went on evenly. “Yourself, just now. You know what you said.”

Now she looked like she wasn’t so much _going_ to argue with him as just wanted to.

He let his own eyes harden. “I didn’t keep count of how many times I would have killed for a pint today,” he said quietly, “but it must have been at least two hundred. Just today. Today was a bad one, fair enough, with the lad interfering and putting me on the road all day and all, but even on a normal day, well over twice an hour. _Well_ over, Eileen.”

“You haven’t had a drink in years,” she accused, as though she suddenly didn’t believe it.

“S’right,” he agreed. “And every five minutes, it’s still bloody hard. Pubs everywhere you walk. And you haven’t cast a spell in years, and maybe it hasn’t been so hard for you, just sticking to whatever you do in that kitchen of yours, and maybe now it will be. Just self-defense, Ellie. It’s the reasons you think of when the demons _don’t_ have you by the throat that are the sane ones.”

Reluctantly, very reluctantly, she put the stick down. “What did I say?” she asked begrudgingly.

So he reminded her. And he reminded her again in the morning, when she wanted to tie the handy convertible sheathe Seth had sent with the wand at her hip rather than the back of her neck, and the morning after that, and the one after that, and kept on ostentatiously drinking his very unsatisfying tea and apple juice.

* * *

 

 [1] Tobias’s mother was not the Mabel Hind who was an IRL famous performer at the Malt Cross, but was probably a relative. There may well have been a magical strain in that family, as a matter of (in-canon-)fact, going by the surname: the white deer (stag or doe, hart or hind) is a strong presence in folklore, symbolizing everything from unrequited love in France to the beginning of a quest (for knowledge and/or the unattainable) in Arthurian legends to purity, redemption, and good fortune in Scotland, a return to one’s homeland in Hungary, and, for the Celts, that something terrible has been done and doom is coming. To see one is now considered good luck, but this has not always been the case, and to kill one has never, _ever_ been considered a very smart thing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : Severus wasn't lying about the blackberry sauce or whipped cream. It's just that there weren't any pancakes. ;)


	14. #18 Dye-Urn Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lioness slugs a heartless cad, a serpent has a meltdown over luggage, a house elf chucks the flatware around, and James learns why you should never eat a raw yam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** for violent actions and their reactions. Allusions to child neglect and to attachment disorder, both alone and masquerading as more stigmatized things.
> 
>  **Less serious warnings** : Severus is laboring under the delusion that Muggles still undergo what was classically called a Classical Education. He is wrong, and when you almost-inevitably don't know what the hell he's talking about until he explains (believe me, you'll know it when you get there), be assured that I had to look it up, too, and no one is judging your reading habits. n,n; Unless you do know what he's talking about, in which case, ten points to Ravenclaw! 
> 
> **Notes** : Over the course of the next two chapters, your gallant narrator is going to be rather less informed than he wants to be on a particular subject. Twenty points to the House of anyone who figures it out before he does. :D

Nobody answered the door when the rapper knocked. And there was a continued non-answering even when the woman's voice shouted through it, "There's no point pretending you're not in, I can hear you rowing!"

It was, perhaps, more surprising that no one answered when her husband's voice rose in alarm, advising her in the most urgent tones not to try an unlocking spell, and then broke off in an astonished, "Oh."

When a plate flew by her head to smash against the doorframe, however, and her yelp mingled with the strange susurration and the man's startled bellow, the noises from the kitchen did stop, and the three residents (one rather shorter and not in fact a resident) came out into the sitting room.

"What," Lily said flatly, in a tone that declared she would have had her hands on her hips if they weren't occupied, "on Earth."

"An excellent question," drawled Severus, his eyebrow up as he eyeballed the three entrants. "Allow me to return it you back again, with interest."

"Let him out!" she demanded, as her husband flailed and strained against the very affectionate iron maiden of black bryony coiled tight around him.

"I can't," Severus said, a concentrated shot of instant cheer chasing at least half the storms and stress from his milky brow and leaving it somewhat less curdled. "I'm not surprised you assume a ward that ignored you was mine, but that one was, in fact, Evan's."

Without showing any signs of appreciation for this very magnanimous olive branch, Lily looked expectantly at said prettier redhead, who waved at her while continuing to crunch on his carrot and contemplate the pros and cons of very pale versus very dark backdrops for very fair skin.

After it became clear that he was not going to be let out of answering no matter how long he ignored her in favor of the carrot (a pity, as it was a quite good one, very sweet and juicy for what was, when you got right down to it, a root), Ev advised James, "I shouldn't bite down on the tuber-thing. It's got all saponins in, don't you know, quite toxic. Mind you, it's probably the best one to struggle against; I think it's used in bruise balm and that, isn't it, Severus?"

He was rewarded by Spike, leaning against the kitchen's doorframe, looking entertained behind the critical surprised-and-disappointed-in-you expression he was aiming at Lily, and leaning against the kitchen's doorframe. "Not as a simple, and _certainly_ not as a living plant. I rather think he'd like to know why you've decided you simply must break into our flat," he went on to translate. So straightforward, their Naj. "With an infant. So should I, for that matter."

Lily pulled a letter out of what looked like a purse but was probably, if she was anything like Narcissa (which, of course she wasn't, except that Aunt Dru said all new mothers overprepared, especially after the first time they were caught short) a nearly-overstuffed-even-with-magic diaper bag. "Your mother," she said, still with that hands-on-her-hips scowl, "sent me this. It says, 'You may as well not have bothered,' and that's it." She didn't have to demand out loud that he explain.

Evan glanced at Severus, whose eyes had taken on a hooded, calculating look. Turning it into a frown of annoyance, he said, "Evidently she thinks I couldn't possibly think to do anything nice for her without your na—guidance, on my own."

Garbled, sarcastic noises came from the cage of vines, but Evan was already speaking cheerfully over them. "Which is nonsense, of course," he told Lily, "he's got me," and took another bite of carrot.

"Yes, but what on _Earth—_ "

"Well, it was only just Lammas," Severus said vaguely, shrugging.

Jumping in before he could try to go more specific and get that uncomfortable look he got when he was doing more than presenting the truth at a funny angle, Evan told him, "I suppose she thinks walking the land's no good when you don't live there."

"I'm still the heir to it, insomuch as the term can be applied," Severus said irritably. "The house is hers outright, magically speaking. If a witch buys the house and signs the deed and lives in it, ownership passes down through the blood, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes, but _she_ owns it now, not you, and you don't live there, and you hate the place, Spike," Evan said reasonably. "I'm not a magical law expert, and neither is she. She may think, under the circs, more harm than good. Might even be right, for all I know."

"But if done with good and protective intentions," Severus argued crossly, a gleeful glint in his eye, "then not wanting to live in the place shouldn't—"

"Well, but, Spike, there's not wanting to live in the place and there's not wanting to be anywhere near it, ever, don't you—"

"I never said that!"

"You didn't exactly have to, you know."

"A-HEM," Lily pronounced, jiggling the baby.

"Oh, yes, how rude," Evan said brightly, and caught Severus turning slightly pink trying not to choke with laughter as he didn't specify further. "This is Linkin, who's house elf to my family."

The wizened little scrap of a holy terror at his elbow tipped his hat disapprovingly at Lily. That was probably when she noticed that it had been made out of what looked like a mixing bowl, because she blinked.

"Linkin," Evan continued, letting his eyes harden a little and turn his amiable smile bland, "already knows who you both are, of course."

Severus looked as if he wanted to send a menacing _and what you look like_ in the direction of the vine-monster _,_ but since he seemed to be stepping on his own foot (effectively, if not actually), Ev went on, "But I'm afraid I can't introduce you to this little beggar, Linkin, as I haven't yet been formally introduced m'self."

"We called him Harry," she said shortly. Before Evan could ask her why she'd cursed the boy to school nicknames like Botheration and Shagpot and Curly, and quite possibly Louse if any of his roommates turned out witty enough to think up a pest/hair pun of the sort Spike could blurt out in his sleep, she went on, "Now will you let James out?"

This time Ev did step on Spike's foot, because the jaw had moved preparatory to the mouth opening. Which seemed to him likely to result in something inflammatory, and he was the only one in the room who didn't go about with an instant-boil charm attached to either his temper or his sneer or both. Therefore, when someone asked, "Will he behave himself," which was the question that needed asking, it wasn't in the threatening, sullen, rather snide tone he was sure Severus would have given it, but a conspiratorial, even playful one.

Lily heaved a huge, exasperated sigh, and the vine-monster muttered sulkily. Spike had said using the roots, which could cause rashes and welts just on skin contact, for the pointy, poky nails in his weedy trap was on the sadistic side, but Ev had wanted to make sure that anyone who broke in was strongly discouraged from making wand motions, and Potter's bad grace was making him feel thoroughly justified.

Severus shrugged at Evan, and started to say something. He considered, stopped, and gave Ev a you-do-it nod.

Evan gave him sad eyes.

Severus folded his arms, amused.

Evan heaved a sigh just as loud as Lily's, but in a mournful key. "Severus thinks you should be informed," he said, in a regretful tone, "that any magic done with ill-intent in this flat will set off _his_ wards." He gave them a beat to correctly interpret his tone as meaning he would rather have let them find this out themselves, and then, in an aggrieved tone, falsely countered the impression by complaining, "I'm _sure_ that Potter was mumbling that he agreed, there, Spike, and of course he'd keep his word. They didn't need telling, I really do think. It's very nearly rude of you."

"I thought it was polite," Severus said mildly, with a bland expression that made promises Evan was quite looking forward to. "Taking historical precedent into account."

"Yes, yes, all right, nobody's attacking anybody, _are they Jamie._ "

Mumble-sulk.

"There you are, then," Lily declared, fixing Evan with a gimlet stare that wasn't quite like either Severus or Mrs. Snape's. She'd probably got it from her own mother.

"Father," Severus murmured quietly in his ear. "He's a judge."

Evan was surprised by how surprised he was (not by Spike following his thoughts, that wasn't surprising at all), and wondered if he ought to put it aside to think about later. The Blacks really couldn't be said to be typical in any way, when you thought about it, but then again, he couldn't, just at the moment, think of any men other than Spike who he'd have described as sharp. Of course, Lucius meant to be, and a quite high proportion of Slytherins were dangerous under the right circumstances, but it wasn't quite the same thing. Maybe that was why Lily had been able to tolerate Severus's spikiness long enough to get to know him, if his glints and angles felt familiar.

Well, in either case, Spike deserved a reward for being brilliant, so Evan just rubbed shoulders with him while reaching for his wand, instead of kissing him in front of people. This was much better taken than kissing him would have been: Severus clearly understood that the restraint was his reward and was having trouble keeping from laughing again. Which, considering he'd been hunkered down in a wall-eyed and steaming _…_ something or other. Evan hadn't even understood it this time, which was worrying. But in any case, he'd been in that alarming state not ten minutes ago, so the shift was well nigh miraculous.

Ev was even going to call it miraculous with half Spike's favorite people in the same room with him and also a James Potter who'd been tied up for him by his intended, with a spell set into place for his especial benefit two years before their intentions had been agreed upon out loud. That was how worrying the something-or-other had been.

When Evan had lowered his wand and the lady's-seal (he did like that name for it, mostly because Spike thought it was either stupidly and thoughtlessly silly or a delightfully disturbing name for a plant whose every part was poison) had un-grown back into the threshold, Potter shook himself off and, without preamble, demanded, "Why were you throwing plates at my wife?"

" _James,_ " Lily groaned, obviously mortified.

"No one was throwing anything at Evans," Ev said soothingly, just to make Spike's mouth quirk. "Oh, er, Lily, I mean, of course."

"That's Mrs. Potter, to you," Potter growled.

Evan opened his eyes rather wide, and asked, "I thought you'd told me to call you Lily, Lily?"

"That's right," she said, glaring at her boor. "I did."

This deflated him, but only momentarily. Then he was rounding on Spike again. "Well?!"

"I didn't throw anything at anybody," Severus said irritably. He paused, turned his eyes up to the ceiling in a parody of recollection, and amended, "Today."

"There was a dish or something, it nearly hit her!" Potter looked around, and pointed to the plate. He blinked, and said, "But I heard it smash."

"Spike charmed them to be self-repairing," Evan said smugly. Since Spike hadn't done anything he needed to be humiliated for yet, he refrained from snuggling at his arm the way he wanted to, but it took some effort.

Judging from Spike's pained what-did-I-do expression, his tone had been humiliation enough anyway.

"Well, _somebody_ threw it!"

Linkin cleared his throat. "Linkin is apologizing to Lily Potter. Master Evan is not allowing Linkin to hit Master Spike, and Linkin was not aware that Master Evan is receiving guests."

As usual, Master Spike's masterful face twitched. Ev was quite sure Linkin did it on purpose, since he hadn't actually met Spike when he was young enough that Linkin would _properly_ have called him Master Severus. Spike came back, though, with an irritated, "It looked awfully like aiming right for me, considering you were ordered not to hit."

"Linkin is knowing Master Spike is good at dodging," Linkin said with dignity.

Potter stared, and asked Evan, "Why is your house elf throwing plates at your flatmate?"

"You might ask him," Severus noted, without intonation. "He's in the room with you. Available to be asked."

"James Potter is knowing how to deal with elves properly," Linkin disapproved of the (recently-)grubby, radical liberal and his nasty, nihilistic, new wave notions. Evan just barely managed not to laugh out loud at both of them.

"Pity he doesn't care to do anything else properly," Spike said—apparently on reflex, because he looked embarrassed even before Lily was rounding on him.

"That is the outside of enough," she said sternly, and shoved the baby at him. He stared down at it, his face gone rather beaky with dismay, but apparently he couldn't stop himself holding it properly and carefully no matter how much reluctance he wanted to convey in front of its father.

"Lily, are you mad?" Potter yelped. "Don't—"

The baby smacked its lips in its sleep and blew a wet spit-bubble. Potter went over all soppy and coo-faced, and put his arm around Lily. Severus made the This Is Unsanitary moue, but aside from a resigned sigh, he didn't do anything much. Evan, in lieu of snickering or even rolling his eyes at either of them, took a bite of his carrot.

Maybe the crunch shook Potter out of his reverie, because he looked at Evan again and demanded, "Well?"

"It's really not any of your business, you know," he said mildly. Crunch.

"It is when one almost hits my wife, who's holding my baby!"

"Yes," Evan explained patiently, "but you weren't invited, you didn't call ahead, you weren't, in fact, expected in any way, and no one even let you in. It's take what you get, under those conditions, and be happy it's not large, hungry dogs or whatnot."

"And in any case," Severus put in, because he had no self control around Potter, which was, to be fair and in Ev's opinion, not really his fault, "that would, under other circumstances, have made it your business only to the extent Lily considered it ought to be."

Potter was opening his mouth to be incensed at him, but before he could quite marshal his lungs, Lily had already said, quite cheerfully, "Well, _that's_ true. But I only broke in because I heard shouting and crashing, Sev. Can't it be a little bit my business? I was even sort of worried about the right thing."

She gave him a winsome look, and Evan did not stab her with the painting knife in his pocket. Even though palette knives, even the pointier kind used for actually painting, were more like spatulas and it wouldn't really have hurt her much.

And he wouldn't have stabbed her _hard._ He'd just have poked her, repeatedly, with an aggrieved expression, in the face. As one does.

"What," Spike drawled, leaning Evan's way a little. This didn't actually make him feel better much because he hadn't been _worried,_ exactly. It was just that she was taking liberties and no one was going to take her to task for it. That she'd taken them _because_ she knew no one would. That didn't bother him when Narcissa did it, as he might have admitted in private, if pressed. "Do you want points? You're asking the wrong person, then; I'm the only one here who never had a school badge."

"Harry hasn't," Evan pointed out languidly, leaning into him back.

"He will, though," Potter gloated, and floated the baby away from Severus, who didn't protest in any way whatsoever, or even look like he wanted to. Which was interesting, as he'd never tried to browbeat and ridicule Lucius about being too proud and fussy to be a hands-on da and had very nearly perfected the art of reading potions journals with Draco sitting on him, and yet was always prompt, not to say emphatic, about handing The Blob back to Narcissa. Ev had thought that was a character judgment, but now he'd have to consider it might it mean something else. "Who'll be the next Head Boy, then? You will! You will!"

The baby startled awake, and looked ready to start crying in astonishment, but evidently Potter rubbing its—er, his nose with one finger and poking his chin and cooing at him was familiar enough to be reassuring. Ugh. The crow he gave was cute enough, but if he started wailing, Evan was going to slap a sleeping charm on him. Ev didn't need a migraine almost as much as he didn't need Spike to get one, with the way he'd been acting even without.

"I believe the next Head Boy will be Mr. Temperus Mistlethwait, of Hufflepuff," Severus volunteered dryly. "Professor Slughorn says he is, quote, neither the most scintillating, comma, aha, comma, nor the most well-connected lad in his year, but sound and, comma, pause for wink, finger-wag, and term of patronization, unlikely to result in explosions. Unquote."

Lily laughed, and if it wasn't quite a giggle it had those sorts of young-girl overtones. It wasn't half enough to make Evan forgive her entirely for the eye-batting, since he now had a horrible suspicion that she was the only reason Spike was susceptible to his tragedy eyes, _ugh ugh ugh._

Well. Spike wasn't susceptible, as such. Evan couldn't use them to get things he was asking for, the way people whose partners had less active left eyebrows could use puppy eyes. But properly applied they usually had a good effect on Spike's mood, and sometimes on Evan's immediate future. Considering that Severus was impatient when other people tried it on with him and scornful when he saw big eyes really working on other people, Ev had always felt that was a bit special.

He seemed, however, to be taking their little exchange better than Potter, who was glaring again. Severus had on his oh-for-Salazar's-sake-what-did-I-do-NOW expression, and his shoulders were tensing, and he seemed to be regretting giving up the baby-shield even if did mean Potter's hands were full.

"Well!" he said brightly, or at least, as brightly as he could over the yawn he was affecting. "Now we've got your mail sorted, Lily, I'm sure you'll want to get back to where your changing table is."

"Quite right," Potter agreed, giving him a grateful look.

"No," Lily insisted stubbornly. "I want to know why your elf is chucking things at Sev." It wasn't quite a glare she leveled down at Linkin, but it was a rather forbidding look. Ev knew where she'd gotten that one from, and it wasn't one of her parents. Especially with her green eyes it was obvious, even without the glasses and black hair: that was pure Tartan.

"Master Spike is stopping Linkin from obeying Master Evan's orders," Linkin explained, and what he shot Spike's way _was_ a glare.

Potter blinked. Dubiously, he asked, "Can he do that?"

Severus appeared to consider this question, and then to consider how to answer it, and his considered response was one of his vicious, face-splitting shark grins.

Evan sighed internally, and shot him a plaintive _not helpful, Naj_ look. Severus's eyebrows went up a bit, coolly, and his chin joined in with them—or, rather, out—to express his complete lack of interest in being helpful at this juncture. Evan shouldn't have expected anything remotely resembling rationality of him with Potter in their parlor, really. And he certainly hadn't been rational earlier.

Out loud, he answered carelessly, "Oh, well, not really stopping him, you know. There were disagreements on matters of detail I hadn't covered, and since I was in the other room at the beginning and couldn't tell Linkin I didn't care, it got a bit heated."

Severus's mulish face told Evan that telling Linkin he was perfectly happy for Spike's judgment to prevail would not, in fact, have helped. That was new information. Huh.

Lily was also looking at the mule, and got a funny look of her own. She said to them both, very politely, "Excuse me just a moment," and brushed past them to go into their kitchen.

They heard her say, "Oh. Oh, dear," and so Potter whipped his wand out and was holding it on Spike (who folded his arms and looked affronted), and started backing around the room and past them to join her, clutching the baby defensively. Naturally, the baby got scared and started to cry.

"Don't look at me like that," Spike scowled at Evan. "As far as I can make out, he was _born_ insane. It's not my fault."

"I wasn't looking at you like anything," Evan said mildly.

"Yes you were. It is not my fault that our flat has currently been afflicted with an air-raid si—I mean, a banshee. If anything, it's Lily's fault for being vague when she ought to have known very well how Potter would react."

Evan could have gone back in time with him and got into why Lily and her husband had barged into their flat in the first place. After he'd got Severus to shout his nerves out they would have eventually got 'round to making peace by blaming it on Ev's dad for making Joining His Schoolmate's Club a Family Institution. This, being both externally aimed and inarguable, was always a satisfactory conclusion.

Now was not the time, though, not with an audience. So he just said, "Well, that's true."

Potter, who'd nearly got to them by now, looked at them suspiciously, and silently demanded they let him pass into the kitchen. They looked at each other and did, Evan shrugging and Severus rolling his eyes expressively. This was so much more than Potter had any right to expect, even after Linkin had worn Severus down, that Ev considered taking his temperature.

But then, Severus had always had the abysmal habit of bending over as far backwards to look good for Evans as he could without actually committing suicide, so there was that.

What Potter found Lily oh-dearing at in the kitchen, of course, was a confusion of trunks: open, half-packed, re-packed, some packed tight with whipcrack precision, some all in a jumble.

Evan probably shouldn't have asked Linkin to help. He'd known Severus would hate and resent it. However, when he'd come back into the kitchen over fifteen minutes after leaving it to find Severus staring blindly at the very same perfectly unremarkable shelf full of perfectly undisturbed teacups and tins Evan had left him opening and ready to tackle, he'd felt desperate measures were called for.

He hadn't _really_ thought that just because Severus seemed to have no ideas of his own about where to put anything he'd be amenable to anyone else's ideas. In retrospect, when Spike was offered elf-help but continued to look lost instead of immediately scoffing, Ev should have taken that as a completely bad sign. Not a hopeful one at all, even in the practical sense.

At least Spike hadn't agreed to let _him_ help with the kitchen. He would have _known_ the world was ending, possibly in less than an hour, if Spike had let him near the teapots, much less the tins of tea and herbs and spices.

Having a shouting match with Linkin had got Severus out of that wall-eyed fit, it was true, but Evan wasn't sure that two people working each other into bouts of hysteria in his flat was much better than one person sinking into a catatonic stupor. It was enough to make him very nearly pleased Evans had come around.

Torn between habitual suspicion and what Evan assumed was an extra-large heap of puzzlement because they weren't keeping the packing a secret from him, Potter asked Ev, "Where are you going?"

Severus _very very belatedly_ shot Evan an alarmed look, alarming him in turn. He tilted his head quizzically, and said, "I know it goes against the grain to give the man information for the asking, Spike, but this is hardly a secret, is it? I mean, how could it possibly be?"

Severus just went on looking mulish, now with additional rattled. Ev was sure it just looked like a scowl to Potter, at least. He wanted, badly, to get a reassuring grip over Spike's knobby wrist, but in this company it would be an unforgettable, if not quite unforgivable, embarrassment.

Answering for him would also be an embarrassment, but Evan thought (he couldn't quite tell, knowing better and seeing clearer as he did) that this looked, from the outside, quite like a Sodding Snape Mood. And it had been far from unknown, at school, for Severus to lapse into a fit of the glowering uncivilized sulks and refuse to speak to people who were annoying him.

Sometimes even to people he quite liked who were annoying him by breathing within a five hundred feet of him. Quite often, in these cases, for no reason anyone could discern. Anyone, at least, who didn't know about his headaches, or how he got when nearly-anyone stepped or sat too close to him, or what Avery had done in the bathroom that morning or what amusing little trick Mulciber had tried to play overnight.

So if Evan did the talking this time, he didn't think anyone would realize that he was doing it because Severus had, just from seeing the trunks again, gone every bit as glue-mouthed as if someone had used his own tongue-sticking hex on him.

He therefore answered himself, carelessly, "Not a chance. You know Sluggy's probably already trumpeting it."

Severus looked dubious.

"No?" Ev blinked.

Severus worked his jaw a little. Ev would have floated him over a glass of water if they'd been alone. A little roughly, as if it had been years rather than minutes since he'd last spoken, he said, "He won't want anyone under the impression he's more available, for anything, than he is normally. Less, if possible. These are uncertain times, and he's not…"

"Brave?" Potter suggested, with a bit of a look-who's-talking expression Evan was mildly tempted to hex him for.

Spike pursed his lips in consideration. "Steadfast," he decided. Looking at Evans, he added, "All water. He's constant in his way, but his way is to waver with the currents, and when he meets with obstacles he doesn't tackle them but slides past and leaves them behind."

"So, a total coward," Potter concluded, drawing the baby closer as if to protect it from contamination.

Severus's eyes flashed, but his tone was perfectly level when he said, "A politician, and one of the most successful ones that there is, I believe, behind the veil of Secrecy. You're not expected to understand or respect his methods, but you should be thanking every god, star, saint, and ancestor you can think of that two particular Slytherins have less ambition than an oyster, and of the two he's foremost."

"Who's the other one?" Potter asked warily. Evan was rather curious himself.

Spike's eyebrows went up coolly. "It doesn't matter, as neither has any," he pointed out.

"Oysters make pearls," Lily mentioned, apropos, in Evan's opinion, of very little. Spike's colorful analogies were often quite random. She was studying the ceiling, however, very studiously indeed, and if she wasn't quite smiling she was dimpling conspicuously. "Shiny, lovely, pretty, pretty pearls."

Spike's face lit up, which annoyed Evan no end. "Yes," he agreed as if suddenly enjoying himself. "But oysters make pearls only because some sand's got in to irritate them, in order to be comfortable."

"What do you think would happen, then," Lily asked the ceiling, "if one of these unambitious Slytherins got lumbered with their own sort of grain of sand? A gadfly, sort of thing?"

Spike folded his arms and looked cross, annoyed. "The one who first called himself a gadfly was Socrates," he said, sounding, for some reason, rather insulted. "Anyone fit to even _aspire_ to that name should be wise enough to know who needs stinging and in whose defense the stings and arrows ought to be turned."

"Slings and arrows," Lily said in a correcting tone.

Severus's You Have Insulted Me annoyed look turned into the You Have Ruined My Pun And I Do Not Expect You To Be Dim one. She giggled.

Evan, rather to his own horror, found himself exchanging a glance of mutual dreary resignation with Potter. At least Potter looked instantly appalled as well, though, which was cheering.

Being an active Gryffish sort, Potter decided to try and make everyone who'd noticed forget it by repeating his question loudly. "So where _are_ you going? And what has it got to do with the Slug?"

"It's a musical instrument," Spike said pedantically, sliding Evan a _halp_ look.

"…What?"

"A slughorn. It's a wind instrument. A bit like a trumpet, a bit like an oboe, and a bit like a reductor curse."

"…What?" This time it was Lily blinking.

"You point it at something and play on it," Severus explained, less condescendingly than he would usually have done (Evan gritted his teeth), "and the thing blows up. Very handy on the battlefield, which is probably why they were outlawed in the Goblin Treaty of 1635. Concluding the rebellion after the Wand Ban of '31, of course. Banning wizards from using specific enchanted weapons is hardly equivalent to banning goblins from using wands, but I suppose it allowed the goblins to save face. And reduced property damage, naturally, which is quite important to goblins, since they have forges rather than mending spells. You can get quite a lot more damage done over the length of a song, I should think, than by having to cast a spell over and over again. It's a matter of not pausing so often, of being able to do a continuous sweep rather than having to aim at each individual target."

"You're making that up," Potter accused.

Spike looked offended again. "It's in your textbook," he said, not quite snapping but definitely annoyed, "if you've kept it or, indeed, ever bothered to open it. Even muggles know about them—well," he amended, "the ones who read. Admittedly, muggles think they're a made-up instrument and don't know _why_ they were only ever mentioned in the context of battle. Chatterton and Browning were both mercifully obscure on that point, and just glided over the things in passing."

Thus having been given enough time to think, Evan slung a friendly arm around Spike's shoulders and commented, "I doubt you'll be able to convince anyone to call him Oboe, Spike."

He could feel the tight trapezoid relax under his elbow as Severus put on a very serious frown and asked, slightly anxiously, "Tuba?" Hastily, he scrambled, "Wait, no, that could go very badly indeed. Say, then, Cello?"

"NO!" Evan burst out indignantly, squeezing Severus possessively before he could catch himself. _Blasphemy!_ There was _one_ cello in Slytherin, and it was _private._

"I could see Tuba Lard catching on," Potter said dryly, after looking at Evan as though he were mental and then visibly deciding that Evan _was_ mental and it therefore wasn't important and he, Potter, probably didn't want to know. Which he certainly wouldn't have, and Ev would have had to obliviate him anyway, so well done Potter. "And I can also see no one's answered the question I asked ten minutes ago."

"Oh, two, Jamie, at most," Lily said sedately, looking as if she wanted to take her baby back but felt everyone was safer as things stood. It was nice to see she'd grown a _little_ sense.

"Felt like fifteen," Potter muttered.

Evan didn't have to look at Spike to know he was sneering. Probably magnificently. "Well, it's like this, coz," he said benignly. "Before Severus here was able to work on the werewolf-curse problem practically, he was already looking at it from a theory point of view. Only that lab of his took up really all his time, don't you know. He was writing a whacking great paper on the thing—"

"For IAMB," Severus explained to Lily. "Lycanthropy and vampirism both affect humans exclusively, and both have so far proven completely impossible to shake, or, as it were, cure, and—"

"And that European potions guild," Evan rolled his eyes tolerantly, cutting in because _nobody_ wanted them all five, or six counting the baby, to be in Ev and Spike's flat together all night, and Spike wasn't trying Potter's patience deliberately this time, "makes quite a lot of demands of a bloke before they let him in, apparently."

"Because they have _standards,_ " Severus said, as-ever disgusted with the British one.

"But surely you don't have to completely pack up your flat just to go do some research, Sev!" Lily exclaimed.

Severus just stood there, abruptly radiating misery again, so Evan squeezed him as subtly as he could (which was, he flattered himself, quite subtly) and explained, "Well, it's the 'some,' d'you see. We're taking a busman's holiday so Severus can get the physical, er—"

"Data," Spike said shortly, with an irritated sigh.

"Not a real word, I'm sure of it. But after that, he says he's going to need to really bury himself in the best library we've got. And that's the one at Hogwarts."

Lily's face changed. She looked from Severus to Linkin to the trunks, and she looked as if she suddenly understood something that was very bad indeed. "You're moving back to Hogwarts?" she asked in an odd tone, a bit tight.

"I'll be helping Slughorn out a bit, so as not to be a leech," Severus muttered, starting to slide behind his hair.

"And what about you?" she asked Evan. It was a calm tone, but there was something ringing behind it, he wasn't sure what. It must have rung alarm bells for Severus, though, because he started to straighten and go all tight again.

"Oh, I'll go home," he said carelessly. Which was true, either in an upside down and sidewise sort of way or a deep one, although not both at once. "Set up a suite in Rosier Hall, be quite undisturbed." Also true. "Just like when I was a kid, just you and me, Linkin, eh?"

Not true in the slightest, and Linkin didn't try to answer except with a very slight little bow. He wouldn't have minded lying to her; he'd been the elf for a Slytherin family since he was an erkling. He might, however, have been justly worried about making Spike's face twitch.

"It's been convenient living close to the Alley," he rattled on jovially, "but there's always apparition, and—"

He staggered back, not sure for a moment what had just happened. Something very sharp and intense and unpleasant and disorienting, just below his eye.

"Lils!" Severus stormed, wrapping strong and steady and snake-quick around Ev's back and arms.

Oh. She'd slapped him.

He blinked and touched the warm spot on his face, confused.

Now she was shouting at him—or, at least, storming just as furiously as Spike. Her face had gone a blotchy red, but it was _skin_ red, which was really somewhere between dull flamingo and bright salmon pink. What you wanted for that was a mix of mostly Maddar lake and flake white, with just a _pinprick_ of blue, probably pthalo, and touches of yellows here and there. Or, if you were feeling lazy, you could use antique white instead of the yellow and the flake, although there wouldn't be as much control that way.

You probably couldn't stop it looking dreadful with her hair, though, whatever you did. Not Titianesque at _all._ Not even on Titian's worst day. Maybe on Titian's worst day when he was thirteenish.

What she was actually saying, or shouting, or hissing—she didn't have the knack of saying things in a low and calm voice with a whole world's worth of danger behind it, like Ev's Spike, which only went to show that there was such a thing as Native Quality even if two people more or less grew up together, which of course was no reflection on her and nothing to do with her blood whatever Narcissa or Reg might say, it was just you could only have one golden snitch in a game and the game was over because Ev had caught him, careful and secure like other people seemed too stupid to be, not to mention blind—

What she was actually raging was, "How COULD you? HOW could you let him GO BACK THERE AND LEAVE HIM THERE? I thought you were DECENT! _I thought you were a HUMAN BEING,_ you SOCIOPATH!"

"FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, LILY," Severus out-roared her, "SHUT IT!" He'd got between her and Ev somehow, at some point—Ev wasn't very clear on this—and was holding her back with one long hand held splayed outward and open at the end of his long arm, keeping the distance between them.

Potter, Ev noticed vaguely, looked as if he wanted popcorn. He frowned when Spike told his wife to shut up, but then he looked at Spike's open, unthreatening hand, and looked at Lily's furious face. For all his disapproving talk about Slughorn, he just started bouncing the newly re-activated air-raid banshee soothingly and rubbing noses with it and cooing by way of choosing the better part of valor.

The two of them glared at each other, Lily nearly panting with emotion and Severus taking long and extremely deep breaths, calming down, for the purpose of, while Potter bounced his spawn and Evan touched his own two cheeks in turn. He wanted to see if one was hotter than the other.

It was, so he drifted past Potter into the living room, summoning his paintbox and a canvas-on-easel and a portrait-sized mirror, and started to do a profile study. It was quite rare to get the chance to see what a _real_ handprint on a person's face looked like, after all; it would be wrong and remiss of him to let it fade without seeing how the colors flushed and faded, and how the marks stretched as he changed expressions.

It wasn't really very hand-print-like. There weren't any finger-marks, like there were in the fanciful, childish illustrations one usually saw them in, and it wasn't crisply defined, either. He could nearly tell where the knobby joints were where the first two sets of proximal phalanges and metacarpi met—or should that be the last two sets? He was sure it had been the base of her index finger that had made the biggest, reddest splotch. It would stop being interesting if it bruised; he'd seen bruises on skin many times before.

Of course, Spike's skin had a completely different tone than his; it was usually lighter, and it was also usually a bit yellowed because of the soap he used that he swore protected him from all but the worst cauldron splashes. And despite being sallow-under-that-influence it didn't go gold the way Ev's could when he was very, very careful about using proper anti-sunburn potions, and it was also never as pink. It could have an almost blue tint in places, that could make you think of the deep shadows in glaciers even though of course it wasn't anything like that really, and was probably exactly what all those medieval painters had been thinking of when they churned out all those dreadful pictures of pious green people that had made Evan think for years that muggles were actually a different species, quite often with gold plates growing up from their shoulders in a bony growth. Which he'd thought must be rather heavy and cumbersome, not to mention awkward when one wanted to shake one's head and making pillows rather useless.

But he'd seen bruises on other people, too, if less frequently.

"What?" Potter asked, eying him.

"Hm?" Evan replied, his voice sounding faraway even to himself.

"You were glaring at me."

He blinked, and then blinked more deliberately a couple of time and let his eyes widen just a touch. "Oh, was I?" He checked his painting to make sure Potter hadn't got into it by accident while his thoughts and, apparently, eyes were wandering to the wellspring of bruising.

Rats.

Evans and Spike were hissing at each other like geese, very quietly. Spike had a good neck for that, but Ev wasn't going to do a caricature or even a cartoon, even with swans instead of geese, because that wasn't one of the things Spike had a sense of humor about. He always took things like that personally. Quite understandable, even if Ev was a little hurt that Severus couldn't remember to make an exception of him. But one thing that you had to accept about Severus was that no matter how hard he tried to be nothing but silver-green (silver-teal?), there were some times when he just really couldn't keep his head.

"Wasn't I just in the sitting room?" Evan asked, with a sense that it was rather late to be asking it, and briefly not entirely sure who he was asking.

"Yes, you were," Spike said levelly from just above his ear. Mmm.

"Are they still in there?"

"Regrettably."

Evan sighed with disappointment, regretting it, too. Here he was magically (really magically?) snugged up on-if-not-in bed with his Spike, and he couldn't even curl in for a beautiful nap, let alone really take advantage. Not when they had an infestation of something that resembled 'guests' closely enough that they were inevitably going to be hospitable whether even courtesy really required it of them or not.

And he was all warm, too, with wiry arms steady and close around him, like a fortified turret, and Spike's throat bare and smooth-soft and smelling of deep woods and dark spices and lush heather and home against his face, long, strong fingers gently cupping the other side of it and an uncompromising kiss rooted warm and unmoving into his brow.

Mournfully, not really trying to start anything, just to make his feelings plain and a bit because he almost couldn't help it, he dipped his head to get the knob of Spike's collarbone against his lips and sucked, the soft hunter-green collar of Spike's soft Sod Everything Including Cliché And Decorum; I Am Not Leaving This Flat Today shirt rubbing his nose. Spike was never what anyone west of Italy and north of Spain would call handsome (the parochial twits), but for Evan's two knuts he was gorgeous in the dark, pure colors he wouldn't wear in public, especially when he'd tied the black curtains back for work and was letting all the life and proud bones in his face show.

And if no one agreed with Ev, that was because their tastes were uneducated and unrefined, and it also meant they mostly didn't alarm Spike by making overtures he tended not to even recognize, much less know how to handle.

Spike stroked his hair. He must have been serious about it, too; he'd taken Ev's hair-ribbon out so that what had formerly been a decently neat-enough club was waving all over both their shoulders.

After a moment he said, still in that level tone, "You _could_ have been a sociopath, I think, or something like it. If nothing had interfered with the _nothing,_ " his voice was very briefly savage before settling again, "that was all you had in that cavern by yourself with just the elf. If you hadn't learned that other people were real. I don't think you would have been like Rabastan and that lot; you have to care in twisted ways to be like them. You didn't care at all about anything when I met you, you didn't know how. Maybe you were one, then, or headed that way. Maybe you would have taken their example to find some way to feel. But, in fact, you grew in another direction, and are very, very far from it."

Evan breathed until his throat hurt a little less, crushing his eyes into Severus's neck. If anyone knew him, Severus did. But then, he'd heard Severus admit, right out loud, to bias. To having given up on even being able to evaluate Evan with the same cool, devastating, value-neutral accuracy he turned on other people as a matter of course.

"I know you think," Severus went on, running long, slow strokes down his back, "that it's something in your blood and bone, something you were born with. I can understand why you think that, because your father doesn't put on much more of an appearance of giving a damn about anything than you do, in your public face. I suppose it's easiest to think he can't care, beyond a distant sort of warmth."

Evan bit him. Not hard enough to break skin, nowhere near it, but hard enough to express his opinion.

"And maybe he can't," Severus said, trying to make it sound as if he were just continuing uninterrupted rather than making a concession, but Ev could hear the smile in his voice. "But Ev, wizards are pig-ignorant in some areas, and if we weren't, you'd know that dumping a child on a nanny without even other little monsters to play with and faffing off for months at a time is just as bad for it as beating it, in the long run. Love them all you like, know they were forced to be parents against their will, were never meant for it, know it's a bit of a miracle that they found a way to care about you and like you and be proud instead of resenting that you were forced on them, but know, too, that the way they did find _did something to you._ The something may have been 'nothing,' but a 'nothing' like that—a person has to grow strong in unusual ways to survive it. Ways other people don't have to discover, and can't understand. When they try to understand what they're seeing, Ev, they just don't have the context to see it clear. And that's just as well, when you think about it."

Evan felt that his mind was sort of sliding around this. Not smoothly, the way Spike had described Slughorn, but as if it were some complex, faceted metal structure in a room of mirrors and he a beam of light, glancing off it and away from it, over and over.

He knew one thing, though. Spike had told him something once, written it into his skin, and he'd never had the words to say back—not the same feeling, because it was different and he knew it, and not what he felt in return. Or in reply, rather, because it wasn't a trade. Had never had the words, anyway. But he knew that whatever strength he had, it wasn't from inside him.

Pressing his eyes close again, he lifted his hand up and traced seven runes into the back of Severus's neck, that part of him that was very safe, very hidden, because his soap, in a side effect he hadn't tried very hard to get rid of made him look a bit like he didn't use any, and no one ever really let their eyes linger on his hair. Teiwaz, Raido, Ehwaz, Laguz, Laguz, Isa, Sol.

He felt Severus silently repeat the word, felt him mouth, "Trellis," in frowning thought. What Severus said out loud a moment later, though, because he always understood the important things when he wasn't driving himself into a frenzy of hysteria or depression (which, admittedly, was rare), was, "Hearth," and he tucked a kiss behind Evan's ear. "You _were_ cold, when I met you," he said without moving away, very low, humming through Evan's bones. "That's over. Has been for years."

"Can I get you to admit she's a harpy?" Ev asked his neck, feeling sleepy and hopeful even though he knew perfectly well what the answer was.

And, of course, Severus did laugh silently, for just a breath or two, and say, "No."

"Pleeeeaasssse?"

"Ev, you agree with her. You'll be quite pleased about her attitude, when you're feeling better and you've considered it properly, I believe. If you thought what you made her think, you wouldn't stop at a slap. You punched me in the face for _playing Quidditch._ "

"You didn't warn me you were joining and it was a Gryffindor game and they beat the stuffing out of you," he said sulkily. (It didn't occur to him to remind Severus that this incident had been five years ago, or propose to him that it might be unfair to suggest that one might, as an adult, do the same sorts of things one had thought perfectly reasonable in one's fourth year due to being an idiot fourth-year newly saturated in unaccustomed hormones.)

"And then you punched me. Also screamed down the Quidditch pitch. And nearly strangled someone with thorny vines. Which _grew out of your skin._ And which I strongly suspect to have been poisonous. Just because he was momentarily, as anyone might have expected a team captain to be after a game in which his Seeker did not appear to be playing Quidditch and, indeed, let the snitch escape him—"

"No, I didn't," Ev informed it smugly, snugging it tighter.

"Er, yes, Ev, you did, we won on points because Reg and I were brilliant, thankyouverymuch and all credit due to the beaters although not particularly to Avery in my possibly somewhat biased opinion, but Potter caught it. _Because Gamp was_ , as I say, more interested in the Cup than in a reserve player's personal short-term welfare as regarding bumps and bruises and other matters the Pomfrey could clear up with half a wand-wave. Glass houses, Venusian."

"But I _can_ get you to be handfast with me," he declared, rubbing his nose in, this time sounding more confident than he felt. Even though they'd settled this already. It wasn't _done_ yet.

Spike hesitated, but it was a teasing sort of pause, and his hand never slowed or quickened on Evan's back. "Oh," he said in a resigned sort of tone, "most likely. At least, I wouldn't put it past you."

"Yay," Evan said drowsily, too peaceful to smile, and landed suction-first on his collarbone again, arms snaking around his back. They had very nice pillowcases, even if Spike did occasionally have a Northern fit and whinge on about the ponciness of the thread count and fibre length and the impact of Egyptian cotton on local textile whatyoumaycallems. Soft.

"I'd repeat that in a tone of incredulity," mused Severus meditatively, "but I really can't bring myself to utter the syllable."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : I feel compelled to point out (because Evan is oblivious and therefore I can't get it into the prose) that Severus has a legitimate complaint about 'our bed linens are in effect sort of directly responsible by proxy for my childhood poverty which they are literally rubbing my nose in and you are repeatedly missing the fact that I feel strongly enough about it to keep _bringing it up, Evan.'_
> 
> In Evan's defense, I doubt British wizards know about jersey sheets (actually, I'm not sure how long they've even been available, and google is not being helpful), and obviously he's not going to settle, and silk would be so Lucius. What can one do. vOv
> 
>  **Also** : There was a great Stuff To Blow Your Mind episode on the Killer Kid trope (it referenced kid Tom Riddle!) that I listened to just after writing this chapter, and it talked about the nature-nurture influences, and heritability, and the impact of the terms 'psychopathic' vs 'CU [callous and unfeeling],' and treatments… and actually about 50% of CU kids do grow out of it, especially with help, and do not become sociopathic or violent at all even if they still have social and emotional trouble of various sorts. Evan isn't sociopathic or psychopathic, but he did, as a child, fit the CU diagnostic very, very well. But it turns out that empathy works like a muscle, and can be exercised, and the grey matter that these kids are deficient in can grow with treatment, and the kids who 'grew out of it,' their brains look like normal adult brains in the relevant ways, and not like the brains of the adults diagnosed with the disorder who commit violent crimes, or like their own brains as juveniles with conduct disorders.


	15. Still Dye-Urn, Just After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything Evan says is a lie, Severus is definitely not drunk, and James loathes even more of his in-laws than he had previously supposed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : ..hmm. Not a very dark chapter, really. Does contain bad-Gryffindoring, insecurity, depression, babies, unusual forms of jealousy, autocratic labeling, lecturing, at least three kinds of SLYTHERIN!, enough non-anachronistic mugglish geekery to choke a baffled leonine alpha-jock...

But they had to go back out eventually or let Potter nose through all their belongings. Which was tempting, but just because he was probably stupid enough to set off Spike’s privacy wards didn’t mean they had to be stupid enough to let him do it while Spike’s friend was watching.

Besides, he might just do something more cleverly malicious instead, like letting the baby leak something noxious onto the sofa. There weren’t any specific wards against that, and since the _baby_ wouldn’t have done it on purpose it might not set off the malice-focused ones. Ev had charmed the couch to be quite easy to clean, since Spike couldn’t stand to let Linkin do more than a deep cleaning once a season at most and was more or less hopeless at cleaning things in ways that weren’t strictly synonymous with either ‘tidying up’ or ‘sanitizing.’

He could and would provide dye after he’d bleached something horribly pale and streaky, but it was never really the same, and his coloring charms were, well. It was possible that Evan’s standards were unusually high in that area, and that Narcissa was an equally unreasonable second opinion. Even allowing for that, though, they really weren’t Spike’s forte.

When they did join the detestable duo (tiresome triad? Linkin had puffed off, anyway, so definitely no more than a triad) again, Lily huffed, “Oh, _really._ ”

“It would serve you right if I let you think so,” Severus said, unperturbed. Evan, still feeling a little heavy and warmly clouded in the head, didn’t understand this until he caught sight of them in the reflection from the mirror, with his hair down and mussed and the top button of Spike’s shirt still open, though he’d taken care of the marks Ev had left on his skin (alas) and the wrinkles in his waistcoat and closed three other buttons before leading them out of the bedroom.

“What?” Potter asked, confused. Then he blinked, and stared, catching on, and demanded, “Wait, _what?!_ ”

Spike stared back at him, pulling a mountain of Withering over himself that very nearly covered his massive squirm, and scorned, “ _Good_ morning, Potter.”

“Now, that’s not fair, Spike,” Evan said, happily taking the opportunity to latch on again as if it were only Reg visiting. “You can’t complain, when you’ve worked your heart out to pull the wool over someone’s eyes, about how perceptive they aren’t.”

Spike tilted a haughty look and a haughtier eyebrow up at him, and sniffed, “I don’t see why not.”

“So unreasonable,” Evan mourned, side-snugging him tighter.

“You all insist I’m the worst liar Slytherin’s ever let graduate alive,” Severus argued, folding his arms and raising his chin even higher. “Ergo, anyone who allows me to fool them either is irredeemably dim or _wants_ to believe what’s being hinted at them.”

Evan tilted his head, let a beat pass, and suggested, “We could be lying.”

Spike stared for a bare second before head-butting him into the sofa with what could, really, only be described as a shriek of fury (but also, unless Ev was imagining it, just a _glimmer_ of calculation?). He grabbed one of the pillows Slughorn had visibly found so inadequate and started whaling on Evan with it, snarling, “You say that you are lying— but— if— everything you say is a lie— then you are telling the truth— but you cannot tell the truth— because everything you say is a lie— but you lie— you tell the truth but you cannot for you lie—!”

Evan, through his answering shrieks of laughter and the arms he’d put up to protect his face (or at least his hair, which was inclined to tangle when left free) from the cushiony buffeting, managed to notice that Evans was not only giggling helplessly from the armchair but saying the words along with Spike, in perfect unison and nearly the same mechanical tone, though not so ferociously.

“What in _Merlin’s name_ ,” Potter said helplessly, clutching his baby protectively.

Spike stopped whamming Ev with the pillow, and he and Evans turned to Potter with blank faces and chorused, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.” Then Evans collapsed into more giggles while Spike smirked and himself collapsed down into Ev’s inviting arm.

Ev hadn’t expected him to do that. As far as he was concerned, it proved he hadn’t been imagining that calculating glint, because Spike didn’t even act like this in front of Reg, and certainly not in front of Narcissa. And, okay, maybe he had some long-lost habits of having no dignity at all in front of Evans to revert to. Not even ‘maybe;’ this was in fact very likely.

Actually, it was definite. Spike _never_ had any dignity in front of Evans. But maybe sometimes as a kid he also hadn’t tried particularly to have any, rather than simply had consistently failed.

Either way, though, Evan had never seen Severus affected by drink, fatigue, potions, or anything else in any way that would cause him to be this playful and carefree in front of James Bloody Potter if he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Even hemp leaves, which mostly made wizards giggly and sloppy and dreamy (including Narcissa, which had been hilarious) had just propelled him into a panic attack over… well, Ev suspected that it had really been over feeling sloppy and dreamy and starting to feel giggly, but what Spike had actually started hyperventilating over was that he couldn’t ‘want to move his hands.’ It had looked to everyone as though he’d then started shouting at Mulciber, who was well into the giggling phase, that it wasn’t funny, but in retrospect Ev thought he might have been shouting at his own smoke-sodden brain.

Either way, after that he’d put on a bubble-head charm whenever the rest of them decided to relax with suffumitory potions, and declined to eat or drink anything really fun. And as far as alcohol went, while he had joined them, and would join a dinner party now, for a glass or two of anything but beer, Ev had never seen him anywhere near drunk.

Which was a pity, in Ev’s opinion. While one didn’t want to get _impaired_ at dinners, because anything might be going on under the surface, a glass or two more than he’d drink at his own kitchen table could make them less tedious and his table companions more interesting, which in turn made him more charming to them. And then he got to come home to Spike a bit sloshed, which Spike had always thus far responded quite well to. He was a lot less likely to let Evan hang all over him while he was working if Ev was sober, for one thing, and feeling Spike’s back work against his chest while a potion got orchestrated was of Evan’s favorite things.

Severus kept insisting that he didn’t get drunk because he wouldn’t be a pleasant one, but Ev suspected he would only be unpleasant under, er, ninety-eight percent of all circumstances, and would be a lovely, cozy, sleepy drunk at home with Evan. Probably a very demanding one, Ev expected, making heart-meltingly petulant demands along the lines of _sit here_ and _no, on MY lap_ and _stop being tall_ and _fine, then, I’m sitting on you_ and _right, now, read to me. No, not that book, the other one,_ and _move your arm, I’m going to sleep. No, move it THERE. …Why did you stop reading?!_

Even then, though, Ev wouldn’t expect him to go over all lighthearted and rambunctious and _silly_. And, all right, it was visibly confusing Potter and that could have been predicted. Evans had been swept up in it and was enjoying herself to the point where she seemed to have forgotten _she’d just been mad enough to slap Evan_ , although it was possible that Spike had gotten that sorted with her by goose-hiss while Ev hadn’t been paying attention. And Spike knew Evans; now that he wasn’t too close to the myriad problems she’d represented at school, now that he wasn’t drowning in misery and trying to cling to entirely the wrong person’s shadow for a lifeline, it was to be expected that he’d know how to pull her strings, when he was willing to try.

But if he’d just wanted to confuse Potter, even while entertaining Evans—even to do both those things while startling Ev back firmly and delightfully into his own skin—there must have been a thousand ways Spike could have done that with more dignity. And Spike did care about his dignity, although he always said indignantly that only pompous old toffs even thought like that and what was wrong, anyway, with not being innately a frivolous, airheaded jackanapes?

Ev therefore looked at Potter more closely, covering his scrutiny with a complex series of little shifts and playful complaints about Severus’s bony elbows that would be so much more comfortable over here—no, _here,_ no, _Spiiiiiiiiike…._

Bewildered, he concluded. Potter wasn’t confused, he was bewildered. It might have been something like the expression on his own face back in second year, when he hadn’t been anywhere _near_ awake enough to make sense of the way a grubby scarecrow whose sole purpose in life seemed to be getting into trouble without even getting any fun or advantage out of it had suddenly dropped out of either his nice probably-ordinary dream or the ceiling. And then proceeded to emotionally blackmail him with all the precision of a fish knife—he was rather certain, in retrospect, that at the time he’d had no emotions worth mentioning, but Snape had found a way to hook him anyway—and even more suddenly flashed a sunny, evil, dangerous grin that Ev’s hormones had not yet been up to making sense of. It had somehow made the horrible, nasty, unkind early-morning before-tea sunlight nearly-bearable anyway. Even though Ev had not in the least wanted to be blackmailed into acting like a responsible Slytherin prefect at the age of twelve. Especially given how much trouble it had seemed likely to be, considering that it was Trouble In Second-hand Robes prodding him into it.

Not the same expression, almost certainly. Potter didn’t look hypnotized, like Evan had been (Ev hadn’t even begun to get entranced for months if not years, but if there was one snake-thing their cobra had never needed to be taught, it was catching people up in his eyes and freezing them like baby birds). He did, though, have that look of _something just went wrong with my whole world, I think it might be upside down, or possibly I have accidentally apparated to the wrong planet, because things do not seem to be as I have always known they are, and I would badly like to think that this is a con or a prank but everything’s all wrong for that, too._

Well, as long as Spike knew what he was doing—and this was the best reaction any Slytherin had gotten out of Potter to date, depending on what you were going for—then it prrrooobbbably wouldn’t matter too much that Ev hadn’t caught up yet.

“Oh,” Spike said when Ev had finally got him comfortably settled, giving Potter and his looming-squall in a blanket a disinterested look. “Are you still here?”

“ _Yes,_ Sev,” Lily said patiently, “because no one’s actually explained why Rosier’s nice elf was throwing plates at you yet.”

“Yes we did.”

“Not _really_ ,” she scolded, crossing her arms at him with a _you needn’t think you’re getting away with that, young man_ look that was going to serve her well with her sprog right up until he got old enough to dare to, as Spike was doing now, cross his eyes at her irreverently.

“No one’s also explained why we particularly care,” Potter told the baby, but it was quiet enough that everyone just looked at him and then pretended not to have heard.

—Well, the baby did make a _Gah!_ sort of noise, but if you asked Evan, it was probably coincidence.

“Should I mention at this point,” Evan asked Spike in the same sort of not-really-sotto-voice as Potter, “that in addition no one’s really explained why Eva—er, Lily slapped me and called me names?”

“You realize that if you do, you might get answers?” Spike replied, a little drawly.

“Shutting up!” Ev returned promptly, and got one of Spike’s eye-corner-crinkly who-me-grinning-I’m-not-grinning-I-don’t-even-smile grins back. It was immensely warm-making, all bubbly, considering where he was doing it from and in front of whom, all whip-wiry-solid and radiant heat and smelling all Spikely the way he did with his core muscles very nearly relaxed under the casual drape of Evan’s hand. Evan couldn’t quite stop himself from snuggling him. Just a little.

“So, er,” Potter asked awkwardly, “how long has this been going on?”

“Fifth year,” Evan said pityingly, at the same time as Spike and Lily chorused, “Fourth year,” in identical matter-of-facts tone. And then turned with very nearly the same sigh to give him, Evan, _exactly_ the same _I would ask where you were at the time except I don’t have to because this is not news_ why-are-people-stupid look.

“There’s no need to look at me like a stunned sheep,” Lily added reproachfully. “I was hearing about it _all year._ ”

“You were not!” Spike was all indignation. Evan thought he should probably be a bit ashamed of himself for finding this quite so adorable, since he knew it was mostly delightful because he was just pleased to see their creepy twin act broken up.

But only mostly. The thing with the eyebrows drawn down in the middle and winging up at the edges, and the bright-eyed look that hovered between hurt and scandalized, and the way his chin jerked up and made the tendons stand out in that long neck, all biteable…

…Spike was saying his name. “Mmm?”

“Kindly remove your teeth. You are not a vampire. Even if you were, I should not care to become a data point in my own research, and in any case, we have trespassers.”

“Guests,” Lily corrected him.

“No one let you in,” Spike reminded her, “as Evan has laid out. Or invited you, et cetera ad infinitum. You are not guests. I can’t understand at all why we haven’t kicked you to the curb.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. He eye-crinkled. Evan sulked. This being useless, Evan reconsidered sulking, and bit him again instead. Spike sighed, and shifted them around on the sofa so that now it was Ev curled up on _his_ shoulder. This being deeply satisfactory, Evan nuzzled in and sleepily watched Potter’s brain explode from under half-closed lids.

“Exactly what are you going to claim to have been ‘hearing all year?’” Spike demanded, returning to his indignation because you could only ever distract him from that sort of thing briefly. “We were extremely discreet.”

Lily’s eyes rolled so hard Evan thought they might fall out and bounce on the carpet like grapes. “Oh, _Sev,_ ” she said affectionately, in the tone women always used when they meant _only men are this stupid._ “You were friends with _Lucy Wilkes._ ”

“…Oh,” Spike said, looking disgusted.

“Ah,” Ev agreed sheepishly.

“What?” Potter demanded, his voice ringing with helpless confusion.

Lily heaved an enormous sigh—which, predictably, riveted Potter’s eyes to her milk-swollen bust. “Jamie, half the reason the girls were inclined to agree with you about Sev being a bad sort was because they thought he was a two-timer going behind my back with a complete slag. Er, no offense, Ros—Evan?”

“There jolly well is,” he sat up in indignation of his own. “My Spike is not a two-timer! He wouldn’t go snog Chang or anybody no matter _how_ many times I told him he should! How can you say you were his friend if you don’t even know him _that_ well? —Spike, you’re not allowed to give yourself a concussion, we’ve been through this.”

Severus made an _aargh_ noise of humiliated frustration. Evan petted him soothingly, even though this wasn’t likely to help much. Because, really, at this point, nothing was likely to help much, so at least he could remind Spike he wasn’t alone.

“But if you knew he was with Rosier,” Potter asked Lily, still too confused to be flying towards the direction of the anger-place, although he had that tone that meant he might head that way once he sorted himself out and came out of shock, “why didn’t you tell me?”

He didn’t have to explain that he wouldn’t have cared half so much about Severus if he hadn’t thought Severus was after ‘his’ girl (who, at that point, would rather have slapped him than given him the time of day, and Evan was really rather disappointed in her. He’d never liked her much himself, but she was making Spike’s character judgment look floppy). Everyone who’d ever been to Hogwarts knew that. People who’d been to Hogwarts in _1781_ knew that. Maybe even dead people who weren’t portraits or ghosts did.

Lily didn’t quite roll her eyes at him, but the look she gave him was quite as speaking. “Jaime, you were already _unutterably horrible_ to my best friend. I wasn’t going to tell you he was gay.”

“I’m not gay,” said Severus, affronted.

“You can be a bit cheerful sometimes,” offered Evan, at the same time as Potter stared and said, “He _never smiles._ ”

Severus gave Potter a flat look and said, “That’s not what that means,” and told Evan, “I explained ‘queer’ to you after my first Quidditch game.”

“Mmm,” Evan agreed, and snuggled him again.

“Er, Sev,” Lily said kindly, in a pointing-out-the-obvious tone.

“Neither of us is gay,” Severus said definitely. “He was very nearly indiscriminate before we were exclusive. I’m monogamous.”

“Er, so am I,” Lily, said, “but—”

“No, you’re monogamous _by choice_ ,” Severus corrected her. “Making a wedding promise is meaningful to the two of you, because you find people outside your pair-bond attractive and could, if you chose, act on those findings. You have promised each other that you will subordinate your ids, which are normally human and therefore _instinctively_ polyamorous, to the exclusivity our culture has declared appropriate when people feel for each other what you presumably do, sick-making though it is in your case.”

Lily rolled her eyes tolerantly at him.

Ignoring her, he finished, “It’s different.”

“Also different,” Evan said cheerfully, squeezing him. “I wasn’t ‘indiscriminate,’ Spike, Mum _wanted_ me to be examining the field. It was all discrimination. Process of elimination, don’t you know. It’s not my fault I’d finished sizing ‘em up while they were still working out how to convince me they were captivating and mysterious and not after my vaults or what-have-you.”

“Yes, it is,” Spike contradicted him with a warm eye-smile, leaning in.

“Anyway, I was nice to them,” he said comfortably. “We’re all still friends-ish.”

“What are you all _talking_ about?” Potter broke in, utterly frustrated. The baby was starting to look fretful, too. Severus gave it a pointed look, and Potter scowled, but started to bounce it.

“Well,” Evan said, still comfortably, “the first time I kissed Severus—”

“Punched,” Severus murmured dryly.

“He explained about how muggles are absolutely up-the-wall mental about—”

“Oh, it’s no worse than wizards and blood purity,” Spike said irritably. “I told you, everyone has to have someone to be mental about.”

“Who are you mental about?” he asked curiously.

“Idiots,” Spike answered promptly.

Evan gave him tragedy eyes. “Spike, you can’t do that to me when we have gue—trespassers,” he complained, because he didn’t want to get thumped in front of Lily for pressing him down and snogging him.

“Muggles don’t have a way for men to turn into women and have babies, James,” Lily explained. “Or for a woman to turn into a man and give her wife a baby. They have to have woman-man couples, if anyone’s going to get born out of them, and they’ve got to thinking that that’s what being together is _for_ , mostly. They get very, _very_ upset if women are together or men are.”

“Er, adopting?” James suggested sarcastically.

Lily blinked. “I didn’t know wizards did that.”

“It’s less common when it involves babies,” Severus told her, and she looked confused. “If it looks like a name will die out or a master-craftsman or business owner or land owner will die without issue, adopting a promising young friend or apprentice or distant relative is, as it were, the done thing.”

“Mum will be so glad you understand,” Evan said sleepily.

“Quite,” Severus theoretically-agreed, giving him a dirty look (he could tell by the tone, and the way Spike’s chin angled with the near corner of his mouth tucked quellingly and reproachfully down in Ev’s hair) before turning back to Potter. “Regardless of wizarding custom, it’s a mindset they’ve got into, and they’re mired eyes-deep in it. Actually, blood-purity is more comparable to a different problem they have. This is more like the wizarding dislike for the Dark Arts. In fact, _quite_ like it. Given what you were saying about me already, if Lily, raised muggle as she was, had told you that, it would have spoken dreadful lengths about her character, I should think.”

“Thank you,” agreed Lily primly.

“Not at all,” he inclined his head, courteous.

“You know,” Potter said stormily, “for someone who was just pretending to be above blood purity…”

“Oh, rubbish,” Severus snapped. “As if there’s only one sort of muggle. Lily’s parents—sorry, Lils, you know I adore your parents, but they can be a bit, er, rigid. Petty’s the most sanctimonius prick under the sun, and she comes by it honestly.”

“You mean prig.”

“No, I don’t.”

She crossed her arms at him again. “As if your da’s any better!”

Severus got an odd look. Slowly, he said, “You never knew him when he had self-respect and a job. I think… I never knew it before, but I think… I think it’s more that he’s been afraid of how people do—you know; the nail that stands up is hammered down and all that. I think it’s more he feels that on the raw than that he cares so much himself; that’s why he’s tried so hard to… well.”

Lily frowned questioningly at him.

Wonderingly, Severus answered her, “I saw him just recently, Lils, and it was the most amazing thing. I know when someone’s doing a threat-assessment that turns up a positive, and he kept doing them and getting them and then _relaxing._ And then he cared less about the next thing I said that would usually have made him—would have upset him. It… it was really as if… as if he didn’t mind all the things that used to send him through the roof, as long anyone who did mind wouldn’t—” He glanced and Potter and visibly censored the word _dare._ “Wouldn’t try anything.”

“That sounds very sweet,” Lily said disapprovingly. “You’re not going to say he just worried, Sev.”

“No, I’m going to say he was just a drunken bastard,” Severus said, flat. “But there’s a reason they call it ‘the demon drink.’ People aren’t themselves—or, rather, when we are in mastery of ourselves, we can be who we want to be, rather than the worst that’s in us.”

“On which subject,” Potter accused, “you _are_ up to _your_ eyeballs in the Dark Arts. It’s no good pretending you aren’t. You always were.”

“How the hell would you know?” asked Severus courteously. “You’re too much of a prig—good word, Lily, ta—to even dip far enough in to be sure of what they are.”

Potter adjusted the baby in his arms as if, had his arms been free, he would have been making some more aggressive gesture. It really had been a clever move of Lily’s, Evan had to grudgingly allow. After all, Potter was hardly going to give up his baby up when he was in a place that made him so uncomfortable. Not even to his wife, since he patently didn’t trust her judgment around Spike. “Sirius knows a dark wizard when he sees one,” he said belligerently. “You’re not going to say _he_ doesn’t, just because he’s too good a man to practice.”

“Oh, dear god,” Spike droned. “Evan, let me up, I shall be ill.”

“I’ll fetch you a basin,” Evan said sleepily, itching his nose on Spike’s convenient shoulder-bone. “’Mcomfortable.”

He felt Spike giving the top of his head the helpless _what am I going to do with you_ look to which the only and obvious answer was _cuddle me more_ , and smiled drowsily and snugged his arm. Severus sighed.

“Rosier, you have to know he is,” Potter appealed. “I, er, gather you may not _care,_ but…”

Taking his turn to sigh, Ev dragged himself reluctantly semi-upright. “Potter,” he asked sensibly, “what would you think I was offering you if I offered you pudding?”

“…Pudding?” Potter tried warily.

“Yes, but specifically.”

“ _I_ don’t know,” he protested, and looked at Severus.

“Don’t look at me,” Severus said mildly. “If it contains sugar, butter, honey, or fruits that can be easily separated from their seeds, he’ll probably eat it.”

Evan only barely stopped himself saying _Which doesn’t explain you, King of Tarts,_ and was quite proud of himself. “Well, then,” he asked Potter, “what would you think I was offering you if I said, not pudding, but a _bowl_ of pudding?”

“Custardy stuff?” Potter was still appropriately wary.

“There you are,” Ev said comfortably, and settled back onto Spike’s shoulder. He was only comfortable briefly, though, because after a moment it started to shake as Spike started trying not to laugh at him.

“What?” demanded Potter irritably.

“He means that when you say ‘the dark arts,’” Severus translated in a somewhat strangled tone, “you mean what muggles call black magic. Curses and unforgiveables and so on. Which are a subset of the dark arts, as puddings are of… pudding. Or, that is, not quite a subset—rather, there’s a quite large area of overlap between the two categories, so they’re often confused. And, of course, sharing a name doesn’t help.”

“What’s the other kind, then?” asked Lily, looking lost.

Spike slid her one of his bright, sly-eyed looks. “Well, any magic done without formalities or structure or any medium but will, really. Flying off a swing and floating down, for instance, if it wasn’t a levitating spell. Even what would count as a simple hair-dying charm when done with a wand, or accidental magic if only unconsciously caused, would be considered to count as dark arts if the witch really and consciously meant to do it, and did just what she’d envisioned, using nothing but her natural magic guided by intent.”

Lily blushed, and protested, “I was being _nice,_ Sev, it came out sort of green and she wouldn’t come out of the bathroom.”

“Well,” Spike said in his pragmatic voice, “overlap and a shared term doesn’t actually make the categories synonymous. Mind-magics are dark arts, and they’re dangerous but not looked down on when called by that name; certainly not illegal. There have been centuries where incanting was regarded as a dark art, although it’s currently categorized as a subcategory of both arithmancy and charms. The only reason there _is_ overlap is because most spells work better when you mean them, and when you mean a spell to cause damage, when it’s fueled by rage or whatnot, that makes a curse more powerful. If you go into the history of it, the Unforgiveable pain curse has at times been used by healers with _beneficent_ intent to _shut down_ pain in nerves that were behaving badly and couldn’t be affected otherwise, or to awaken deadened nerves.

“The books will tell you, if you’re not too prunes-and-prisms to find out about the world you’re living in,” he added with a scathing look at Potter, “that if you cast it without _really wanting to hurt your target badly,_ you won’t hurt your target, and certainly not badly. Ergo, that spell in particular is deeply affected by intent, which makes it dark arts in that it’s less confined by the structure of the form of wand-motion and spell-word than fueled by the will, and becomes black magic only when it’s meant to be. And many curses are supposed to be like that, to some degree: they’re more powerful when cast by more powerful witches and wizards, and more powerful when cast by witches and wizards who hate more powerfully.”

“…Dumbledore should’ve hired you the first time,” Evan complained mournfully.

“But so many more people are experienced in Defense Against the Dark Arts than are any good at potions,” Spike pointed out in his reluctant Being Fair Dammit tone.

“And there’s already _one_ teacher at Hogwarts who puts all his students to sleep every class,” Potter said, sort of half-cross and half-brightly. “Sorry, you did say you were just going to be helping old Sluggy out, right?”

“That’s the idea,” Severus shrugged, sidestepping relatively neatly. “There’s no use pretending he won’t dump as much work on me as he can get away with, though. More time for keeping up with his ‘old chums.’ By which I do partially mean old chums, but also in part mean new fruit baskets. He has, however, loathe though I am to admit it,” he told Evan thoughtfully, “at least in conjunction with Professor Flitwick, at least a tenth of a point.”

“Ta,” Potter drawled, toasting him with a dummy before poking it experimentally at the baby’s mouth. The baby was happy enough to take it, and began sucking contentedly. Potter looked like he’d caught the snitch, and beamed at Evans.

Ev would have liked to roll his eyes over the blatant showing off, but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t understand Potter’s pride over making his much better half’s life easier. It was actually a good sign, just maybe, that Potter was feeling unsure enough of himself with said wife to want to flaunt such a minor success that had so little to do with his own skill. The kid hadn’t even looked to Ev as if it was about to get fussy, although he would have been the first to admit that, between the four of them, he had the least experience with babies and would have been the last to catch on.

“No he doesn’t,” he said indignantly, because Potter being a bit silly and a bit more human than that wasn’t going to distract him from Potter driving Ev’s Spike to insult himself. He only didn’t add _I think you’re captivating_ because it was too obvious to say out loud.

Sliding him a _you’ve got not only it but half the continent completely up your jumper_ look of the softish variety, Spike hummed dubiously and sank into calculation. Happy calculation, judging from the corner of his mouth. Ev couldn’t _wait_ to see what came out of it.

It was absolutely typical of Evans (in Ev’s opinion) to ruin everything for everyone by clearing her throat pointedly and looking even more pointedly at the kitchen. Typical too for her to be revoltingly and horribly successful: Severus deflated.

Evan was really, really trying to follow Spike’s lead and be all carefree and everything for them. Usually, this wasn’t a difficult line for him to take; it was usually Spike who couldn’t come anywhere near managing it, and didn’t bother trying. On this occasion, though, Ev felt his fact twitch by reflex into a little smile that he knew would have looked daydreamy and pleasant if he hadn’t also felt his eyes narrowing into cold flint.

He fixed it almost at once, but unfortunately, she’d seen him before he did, _and_ saw him fixing it. _Ugh._ And he couldn’t beat his head into Spike’s shoulder, not just because even Gryffs wouldn’t be able to ignore that but because he’d just told Spike no concussions and Spike would call Hypocrisy, and wouldn’t let him live it down for _weeks._

Calculation on her looked completely different than on a Slytherin. She actually allowed herself to look like she was thinking very hard and it was hard work. It was extremely strange. He had no idea what she was thinking, but he could see it on her face every time she had a new thought, and considered it, and discarded it as bad. He half expected her to put a knuckle to her mouth and say _Hmm_ like a complete caricature, or curl up like The Thinker, but she didn’t go that far.

Going farther than anyone _remotely sane_ would ever have _dreamed of_ , she finally said, “Jamie, you help Sev pack; I think Evan and I need to talk.”

Evan wasn’t even ashamed that he was one of the everybody who choked.

“Well,” she said reasonably to Severus, who was probably only not already yelling because he’d actually choked on his tongue or something and was coughing very hard and trying to get his breath back while Ev helpfully whacked him on the back, “you’re obviously not going to get anywhere unless you have somebody to fight with about how they’re doing it wrong.”

Although Severus was only prevented from forming his high-for-him-pitched noise into actual words because he was still coughing, Evan paused in his whacking, and subsided thoughtfully into rubbing. Severus turned to him, a tongue-tied mask of outrage.

“I am not _helping him pack!_ ” Potter protested, aghast. “I don’t think he should be anywhere _near_ little kids! Because he shouldn’t!”

Evan would really have liked to think things over some more, but he could see phrases like _nasty piece of work_ and _got the wool pulled over your eyes_ looming over the horizon. And he could see that Severus could, too, and it was all about to turn terrible, when they’d just got to the point of being able to sit in a room without anyone covering anyone else in itching powder or dungbombs.

So, he thought, he’d better be the fer-de-lance. He preferred to arrange his life so he didn’t have to be, but, well, sometimes there was nothing to do but strike from the direction they weren’t expecting.

Therefore, he smiled affably at Potter, and commiserated, “That’s all right, old man. We all have to help out when it’s family, but no one’s expected to _like_ his brother-in-law.”

They all froze, and turned to him like creepy dolls with rusted necks. He shrugged sympathetically at Potter.

Lily didn’t (thank Merlin) giggle again, but at the word ‘brother-in-law’ her face lit up and something in her relaxed, as if he’d settled something for her that she hadn’t known was nagging at her. Then Potter, angry and confused (and quite possibly in reflexive denial), said, “You’re just my second cousin or something,” at the same time that Spike, eyes hot and rapt and gleaming and very likely _really_ all pupil, leaned in and purred, “Lance, you can’t do that to me when we have trespassers.”

Promptly, he turned to the intruders and said, “Never mind. Go away, please.”

Potter made a highly predictable retching noise and Lily (Evan sighed) giggled. But everything was at least a little bit all right again, at least for five minutes, because Severus smirked, and told Potter, to the man’s further bewilderment, “I make Evan write all my abstracts. There’s nothing like fundamental laziness to teach a man to get to the heart of any issue as efficiently as humanly possible. Apparently.”

Potter peered dubiously at Evan, who smiled at him sleepily and wondered if there was any way to reschedule the upcoming horror, or at least to get Spike to make tea for it.

It took until he was halfway through a squabble with Spike about whether or not cushioning and featherlight charms ought to be, or, indeed, could be combined before Potter’s brain’s protective what-have-you bowed and broke and allowed him to know what Evan had meant, Ev found out later.

Fortunately, but not happily, he himself was off in the sitting room at the time, being made to feel, while not as small and horrible as Lily probably thought, appallingly and very worryingly ignorant and stupid about the only important thing there was. He wouldn’t have minded her being partly right so much if she hadn't been more right than he was, working with only a tiny sliver of the information he had. And he did have it, too.

His only consolation was the possibility that all the rest of it, the wealth of their lives together and the weight of everything hanging over them now, had gotten in the way of what a girl who’d really only known Spike as a kid had spotted in five seconds flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** :Sirius is completely and totally nothing like some Slytherbrained PUREBLOOD!pureblood real!Black. No matter how tempting that sounds when all his friends are being thick, hysterical, and/or made of 75-100% insanity and testosterone.
> 
>  **Notes** :  
>  **1**. Go watch James and Harry [mess with smokin’ androids](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbHtzqCge_8) with large codplates in [I, Mudd](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LFuPFn_rM0).  
>  Psyche_girl: AND NOW JAMES IS THINKING THAT YOU ARE AND IS BEING DRIVEN CRAZY TRYING TO WONDER WHAT NEFARIOUS PURPOSE THIS ALL CLEARLY SERVES  
> Potionpen: Because muggle-style geeks look harmless to anti-Dark-Arts wizards. And adorable to wizards who are married to them. Also to ~~complain about HBP &DH~~ let Slytherin have the argument in advance about how much to resent the rest of the school for letting their Heroic Slytherin Headmaster Whose Serpentine Heroisim Hath Been Unmatched Since Percy Blakeney spin them neatly ‘round the mulberry bush until the brushes he’d painted black for them hit him inna face as intended.  
> #Neveronereason. ^.^V  
> (Beta-conversation on this chapter (and the last, and, as a rule, in general) was all awesome, was _hilarious, I want to share all of it)_ …!
> 
>  **2**. ...Okay, one more bit. Re Petunia as a sanctimonious prick:  
>  Psyche_girl: I honestly thought “prig” fit Tuney rather well, as a descriptor, and I must say I never really pictured her of all people associated with phallic imagery…?  
> Potionpen: She and her prying giraffe neck poking into everyone’s business, who tells other people exactly who they have to be and gushes all over everyone she likes and keeps it all bound up until she gets overexcited and then spurts her feelings vengefully everywhere without discretion.  
> Psyche_Girl: ..well, I _was_ hungry for lunch. :p
> 
> 3\. Sev’s response to green-haired Petunia was to suggest that if she braided wildflowers into it _without using elastics or even ribbons_ and dressed properly, without shoes of course, she might make a half-passable dryad, what with her giraffe neck and twig fingers. Assuming she were capable of retracting the cold iron rod from her spine.  
>  (Everyone who knows him in later life: (CHOKES))


	16. The Valley, Godric's Hollow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which James is 50% pure testosterone, everyone always knew Evan was mental, Sirius is that one trust fund dude who knows he isn't racist because he introduced his frat bros to hip-hop, there is actualfacts intra-Marauder support, it isn't really about Severus no matter how much either Potter wants it to be, the baby is rather sticky, and Yoko is still the scariest.
> 
> (And Sirius is _absolutely nothing_ like any Slytherbrained PUREBLOOD!pureblood real!Black. Even if it's a bit tempting when all his friends are being thick, hysterical, and/or made of 50-75% testestosterone.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Epic Gryffindor-fail, second-language Gryffindoring, and GRYFFINDOR!
> 
> (Also, _Evan is mental_ , and has always been mental. And, therefore, I must also warn for SLYTHERIN!)
> 
>  **Notes** : So those of you who feel I'm too soft on my Death Eaters, if any of you have stuck around, might enjoy this. I had a guest review on ffnet that I feel ought to be replied to. It couldn't be replied to privately, because: guest review on ffnet, and, well, some of you guys over here sometimes seem to think I'm too soft on my Death eaters. So, here, have a bone, I'll share with everyone.
> 
> Thanks for taking the time to comment, Helen! Nice to hear from someone new. I want to remind you that this is called the Subjectiverse for a reason, and caution you against drinking any of the various narrators' kool-aid. I don't. They're speaking from their own perspectives, out of their own biases, especially when it comes to themselves and the people they most like, love, and dislike.
> 
> And, um, it may be partly writerly insecurity talking, but if anyone is looking at any of these snobby, judgmental, rigid, manipulative, shouty, grouchy, neurotic, bullying, _seriously depressive_ nutcases who mostly _were not sensible enough to avoid getting branded more indelibly than cows by a race-superiority advocating terrorist group_ and thinking they're some kinda 'improbably perfect,' or 'disgustingly wonderful' ecksetra, I'm genuinely a little bit worried about what having those kinds of extremely low standards about people might doing to your life. I mean, 'not requiring perfection in people' is one thing, and healthy in moderation imo, but as much as I love these varied sacks-of-cats and write them as well-intentioned and often even justified from their own points of view and within their own moral and cultural codes, _Narcissa effing Malfoy_ is the one who, at least at this point, has done the least damage to other people, and hell _yes_ I'm including all the Gryffindors when I say that, and Filius.

It wasn’t something Sirius had wanted to know, only he was _so bored._

Bored wasn’t really it. He was just sick and tired of everything. Remus hadn’t come, because they’d had the kind of fight where you both knew the other fellow had a point, but it was such a sick-making point that you didn’t want to look at each other for a while, because, really, no one should be trying to make a point like that.

And Remus _shouldn’t_ have been trying to. Okay, Sirius completely understood that he was depressed about the wolfsbane potion research getting cut off. And if he’d had any ideas about how to do anything about it, or Sirius had, Sirius would have cheered him on all the way, or dived in, or whatever it took. But sitting around moping—that wasn’t a life choice you _defended,_ that was something you couldn’t help, and let your friends yank you out of.

That was how you acted when you weren’t just dying but already half-dead. And just because a person could live half-dead (for years and _years_ , look at Sirius’s poor old dad, who was good enough at it that Reggie, that idiot, thought he was just a quiet, laid-back sort) didn’t mean they should be just allowed to get miserably on with it. Not when there was anyone around who cared about them.

For his part, Moony had said Sirius was being insensitive. And then the fight had turned into whether insensitivity towards wallowers was extremely unfriendly or actually sort of called for. And then Remus had said some quite polite and theoretically-mollifying and _really extraordinarily_ insulting things about how it was nice that Sirius tried to use his _native talents_ at manipulating people for their own good but that didn’t especially make it better, Paddy. If he’d been anyone else Sirius would have hit him. Just to prove he did _not_ think like a Real Black, thank you, because a Real Black would hex.

And _then_ Remus had suggested that Sirius should go and have a nice time somewhere that was away, since he wasn’t enjoying Remus’s mood, and maybe go pull someone pretty and uncomplicated.

So Sirius had said maybe he would, and slammed the door, and slunk off to sulk on Prongs’s sofa and complain at the sprog. You could rely on Harry not to tell you you were being an idiot, although there was some danger of having your nose grabbed and your shoulder burped on and your hair tangled rather disgustingly for you.

He was thinking of cutting it—that would foil the little snatcher, and also possibly teach Moony a lesson. Muggles were doing quite interesting things these days that would show off his face nicely, and he was sure he could do a quite good job of them with Sleekeezy’s or something like that, if not make improvements, so he probably wouldn’t regret it much. Besides, if he did, or if Moony stopped being a dugbog, he could always grow it back.

Only, the problem with coming to sulk on Prongs’s sofa (apart from the glum suspicion that Remus knew perfectly well he was doing that instead of actually finding some bird to pull) was that it was also Lily’s sofa. Even on a normal day, she tended to treat Sirius as if he might explode on purpose. Besides, you never knew when she’d have some of her friends over, which had been irritating even before she’d got pregnant.

She didn’t now, what with not having been in when he got there, and she wasn’t (for a wonder) scolding him over Moony. But the other thing about Lily was that when Sirius came over to visit and it wasn’t to work on a project with her or otherwise get under her skin, she had a nasty habit of ignoring him almost the same way other people ignored house elves.

Not _exactly_ the same way—it wasn’t that she pretended he wasn’t there until she wanted something. But she did rather take the position that when he was in her house just to hang out at James’ place for lack of anywhere better to be, he was there as an appendage of James and should be treated, if treated as present at all, as some combination of babysitter (this part was new) and furniture.

Highly decorative furniture, naturally, and definitely not to be sat on.

This had its benefits. It meant she’d got comfortable enough with having him around to let him in (or not chuck him out when he’d let himself in) even when she wanted to be alone, on the understanding that he would actually leave her alone if she really meant it.

Well, if she really meant it and didn’t just think she meant it because she was upset about something and had been raised not to yell in the direction of anyone she wasn’t mad at.

And he did get to watch Prongs being ridiculous, and monitor how seriously she was shooting him down—and really, Prongs was completely mental, falling for a bird whose ingrained reaction to having fun was to be stern at him.

But you couldn’t argue with him, Sirius had tried and _tried_. At this point it was best just to make the best of it, and it wasn’t as if she was a hundredth as bad as Sirius’s mum. Things could have been much worse; she hadn’t even given in to Prongs in the end _even a little bit_ , as far as Sirius could tell (and he’d looked for it hard) because he was in fact the best catch a muggle-born witch their age could snag.

There were blokes that would have been just as clever matches for girls with more magic in their family backgrounds, but most of them had parents that would have, best case, been a bit stiff and uncomfortable with a muggleborn daughter-in-law. Whereas Cousin Dorea had decades since had any lingering Black prejudices dazed and chatterboxed out of her by her husband, who appeared to be congenitally incapable of disapproving of anyone.

But Lily hadn’t even done the basic research into her classmates that anyone would have _expected_ her to do, let alone the careful research into James’s family that no one could have faulted her for. She really had picked him in the end just because she liked him, even if she didn’t appreciate quite all of him.

That was more than a lot of purebloods could hope for from a spouse. Even James might have found the decision taken away from him, no matter how relaxed Charlus and Cousin Dorea were about letting him be his own man, if he’d spent so long on a girl he’d turned out not to have any hope with that they’d started to get really worried about his other prospects drying up.

But she wasn’t exactly a Hufflepuff, was she? Sirius worried about that sometimes. When your best mate’s girl had a history of chucking lifelong friends who were sickeningly ( _very,_ _very sickeningly_ ) devoted to her because they weren’t slavishly living up to her standards…

No matter how justified it had been _(very, very justified)_ , you worried. Lots of people would assume that a ring and a baby would matter a lot here, but Sirius never knew _what_ Lily would take it into her head to do, except that whatever it was would be done in the name of high-mindedness, even if she wouldn’t exactly call it that.

And the biggest problem with her treating Sirius like sort-of-the-furniture and James being used to having him about all the time was that they didn’t bother to treat him like a guest in front of whom they shouldn’t fight.

As witness now, when he woke up from snoozing on their sofa to have a baby plopped unceremoniously on his lap while neither of them so much as said _hallo, Padfoot_ to him and Jamie just went on huffing, “And don’t think I don’t know what you were about. _Help him pack up his kitchen!_ As if it proves anything that he doesn’t keep poisons in the kitchen, _obviously_ he’s got all his nasty stuff in some lab somewhere, or under his bed or something!”

Ah. They were arguing about Snivelly again. Sirius would have gone four-footed and clamped his paws over his eyes with his ears for padding, only then he would have dropped Harry. He looked at the sprog—eyes still sort-of-bluish if you wanted to call it that, unlikely to stay that way what with Lily’s being green and Jamie’s brown, although the Potters didn’t have Hey Look At Me I’m A Wizard eyes that were reliably hereditary like the Blacks did.

Actually, Sirius thought Lily’s eyes might end up being that sort of family trait, because he’d looked at lots of muggle magazines, not to mention posters, and lots of the mags had been stuffed with cosmetics tips and similar, and the ones that had talked about bringing out the green in a girl’s eyes (mostly girls’ eyes) had shown pictures of eyes that were _vaguely_ green at best. Licheny, sort of, in the most extreme cases, but mostly sort of shadowy or stony, or with different colors mixed up that gave a sort of overall green effect from a distance. But the Tartan and old Sluggy had really green eyes, and Lily’s were brighter than theirs. Maybe, Sirius had thought sometimes, it was magic’s way of making sure it wasn’t ignored when it got born into a muggle family.

—Looked at the sprog who was preventing him from hiding him from the oncoming storm and said, “Already inconveniencing your elders, Harrificus Terriblis? I approve.” Harry’s gaze sort of lurched over to him from following his mum and tried (with, judging from the kid’s dazed look, only moderate success) to focus on Sirius’s face. Which face he therefore brought closer, and scrunched it up and opened wide a few times, since Harry was unequipped to appreciate it properly and mustn’t be bored.  Clearly it had been thoughtless of him to be three whole feet away when the Pronglet’s eyes were all new.

He thought for a second he’d got a smile out of him, even though everyone had said it’d be too early for Harry to smile because he meant it for weeks yet, but no. Everyone was not yet proved wrong: it was only gas. Sirius swung the kid up into the air and onto his arm to broom-fly him over to the changing thingy (making the appropriate zooming noises, of course) in case gas was only a precursor of something nastier.

It wasn’t, in this case. Less fortunately, the changing whozit was closer to the kitchen, where Lily and James were sitting glaring at each other across their breakfast table, ignoring the cat winding plaintively around their ankles and neglecting their silencing charms.

And he _hadn’t_ wanted to know, but… but it wasn’t the particular fight he’d come here to get a break from, and Jamie might need him, and if they hadn’t put up an anti-listening spell they must not care if he heard…

“…That maybe it had nothing to do with you?” Lily was demanding hotly. “Not everything does, you know.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Reading between the lines,” Sirius told Harry, fairly quietly, grinning, “I’d say it means she thinks your Daddy’s still a bit conceited, mate.” Harry looked as if this was far too much to take in, and made a grab for Sirius’s nose. Probably a wise choice, Sirius felt. Showed good taste and all.

“It _means_ I wanted to talk with Evan before he did something stupid he couldn’t take back!”

“And you weren’t concerned Snape would do ‘something stupid’ if you left him alone with me?” James demanded, outraged.

Looking up from the baby in morbid curiosity, Sirius saw Lily give James her tight, tiny-lipped sigh with the big exasperated eyes. “Of course not, Jamie, he’s on—” She checked herself and glanced Sirius’s way. He instantly resumed making weird faces at the baby. “On my side,” she resumed, a little more temperately (interesting).

Sirius waited for James to argue hotly with her.

All that happened (?!) was Lily continuing, “He doesn’t want to have a fight with me, especially not one where even _he_ doesn’t think he has the moral high ground.”

James did snort cynically at that, so possibly something strange was going on but at least Prongs wasn’t under a confundus.

“Besides,” Lily went on, “I didn’t leave him alone with you, I left you with Harry. Sev wouldn’t do anything to hurt a baby.”

“Yeah, because he’s such a—”

“You don’t have to think it’s because he’s a nice person,” Lily cut James off irritably. “He’s been helping his mum take care of other people’s babies since he was only little. You can say it’s just habit, if you like, but he just _wouldn’t_. You saw what he was like when I gave him Harry to hold, Jamie.”

Sirius nearly swallowed his teeth, and started patting Harry down for nasty runes and unpromising stains. Happily, not only did he find none, but Harry, to the extent that his teeny little baby mind was capable of coming to anything a fellow might call a conclusion, seemed to think he was playing a game, and wriggled gleefully.

“Yeah, I saw he didn’t want to!”

“Well, you also saw he held him _right,_ James,” Lily said sharply. “Your friends _wanted_ to hold Harry, and they all made a pig’s ear of it for days. They weren’t a bit comfortable with him and they made him cry, being so stiff and nervous. So did you for the first day or so, for that matter.”

“So what?” James returned hotly. “He’s probably had plenty of practice with that Malfoy kid. He and Narcissa Black are pals.”

Lily paused, and when Sirius looked at her, she had an odd expression, as if James had said something that was inarguably true but not the way anybody normal would have put it. It wasn’t a bad odd, though, it was her _sometimes I love how weird you wizards are_ look, with the corner of her mouth tugging up, although it had taken a while for Sirius to work out that was what she meant by it. He didn’t know what she meant by it now, exactly. Snape and Cissy _were_ pals; Sirius had been telling people that for _years_ before they’d graduated and stopped pretending they weren’t.

Well, actually, he’d told people they were having a torrid monochromatic affair. But only because they were pretending so hard not to have anything to do with each other. It had been a logical conclusion. It was to his credit, he felt, that he’d forgot how tangled-up things got inside snake-brains (if you could call them brains), that they thought it was clever to act like you weren’t friends with your best friends.

“I don’t quite see why you think his bonding a lot with one baby of his own free will quite recently makes him more likely to hurt babies than helping his mum look after a lot of babies as a kid,” Lily said in her reasonable voice, although it was a little marred by the way she was obviously trying not to laugh.

James looked a little abashed. Sirius thought that was a good idea—would put Lily in a better mood with him and all—although he doubted James had done it on purpose. Typically, the skinny lug ruined it by not admitting she might have a point in favor of exclaiming, “That’s not the point!”

Everybody but Harry looked at him in patient interest (Harry was looking at the cat, who’d got bored with nobody petting her in the kitchen and had jumped onto the changing whatzit to nose whiskerishly at him. This lasted for an entire five seconds until Harry flailed excitedly, whopped the very-strangely-named-by-Lily Tigger more or less on the schnozz by no means on purpose, and was abandoned with a yowl of feline affront).

James been neck and neck with Sirius for first in everything but Potions and Charms in their House and year, and they’d both been in the top five in nearly all their classes period, even the ones they were sharing with the Ravenclaws. You couldn’t count Potions against them, and especially not against James, not considering all the problems with the seating arrangements Sluggy had never seemed to see a problem with.

Sirius was very glad to have this concrete evidence, and the even more adamantine proof of their OWL and NEWT scores, which you couldn’t charm your way through except for the actually-charms one, that Prongs wasn’t stupid. Prongs _wasn’t_ stupid.

It was just, sometimes he could be a bit thick. Mostly only when it was about good old Hydrangea, though, so probably that shouldn’t be counted against him. You had to expect a bloke not to be at his most scintillating when a bird had him by the nadgers.

Eventually, good old Hydrangea broke down and asked, “Was there a point?” Admittedly, it was in a tone that said she sensibly didn’t want to know and was slightly dreading the answer. She did ask, though, instead of, say, pressing her advantage, or changing the subject _just enough_. Which only went to show she was not-stupid-but-a-bit-thick, too. So, Sirius supposed, there you were.

“The _point,_ ” James said resentfully, “is I don’t see why you had to talk to Rosier in the _first place._ ”

“Because,” Lily said again, as slowly if she was talking to someone who was actually dim—well, really more slowly than that, so as to drive the insult of it home, well done Daffodil. “I had to make sure he wasn’t going to do something stupid.”

“Yeah, Lily, I heard you the first time,” James said irritably. “My point is, why exactly did you have to?”

“You heard what he—”

“ _Yes,_ Lily, I _heard_ what the nice Slytherin _said,_ ” James snapped, not quite as slowly as she had, lowering his chin a bit. Sirius could almost see his antlers, though of course he wasn’t wearing any at the moment. “Just because a Slytherin says something that sounds pretty doesn’t mean we jump in and put stock in it.”

Sirius’s ears pricked with interest, and he gathered Harry up, bouncing him nice and slow in the hopes of forestalling any potential complaining noises that might interrupt. Of course, there was always a chance of a nappy incident or Harry getting hungry, but Harry was a well-behaved kid so far, as long as nobody left him alone for too long. He didn’t kick up a fuss for no reason at all, the way Sirius had been assured he himself had on every possible occasion.

“We also don’t throw an idea into the rubbish tip just because it happens to come from someone who was in a particular House, _James,_ ” Lily folded her arms tightly. Sirius buttoned his lip on _er yes we do,_ and knew James was doing, too.   “Do you have _one thing_ you can actually hold against Rosier, other than who his family is or who he cares about? And you might want _not_ to say that who he cares about is quite important, because I care about Sev too, Jamie, even when I couldn’t be friends with him it didn’t mean I didn’t _care_ about it, so just don’t you dare. You name one real thing, go on.”

Sirius could see James want very badly to say, _Well, he did break my wand,_ but he wasn’t _that_ thick. Reminding Lily of that time they’d pushed Sniv far enough that he’d lashed out at _her_ so hard she’d dropped him would really not have been the best of plans. Wouldn’t have been even if Evvie had broken Jamie’s wand in a really malicious way, instead of as a shock-and-awe disarming technique because he’d seen, from his broom, that one prefect was giving silent consent and another had already failed to break things up and Jamie had fallen into such an ugly mood that it was going to take something seriously jarring to hit his inertia off the rails.

Evvie could be like that, Sirius remembered from when they’d had holidays together. He’d just sit listlessly with a book or his drawings, ignoring everybody, for _hours,_ until Bella was all transported with imagination and Andi was at her wits’ end, or Sirius and his mother had been screaming at each other so long that Dad had given up and carted Reggie off. And then he’d look up, and look aggravated behind that droopy, glazed-over, can’t-be-arsed look he’d always had back then.

And then he’d say very loudly that _his_ house elf made sure he ate at regular intervals, so that Kreacher swooped in and started fussing until Mother started yelling at Kreacher instead. Or he’d challenge Narcissa to a contest where each of them picked one of Cissy’s sisters and tried to make their frock the nicest. Or, then again, he might turn all the fleur-de-lises in the wallpaper into real flowers ‘just to see if he could, he hadn’t thought to make sure they stayed attached to the walls, whoops, er, oh dear, erm, possibly he hadn’t got the pollen quite right, they should probably evacuate the room right about now.’

Bella had tried to keep fighting through the frocks contest, though Andi had seized on it with relief, but hadn’t managed to keep her temper lost or even a straight face on for very long after Cissy had put Andi in the perfectly ridiculous pink poufy fairy-princess thing.

It likely wouldn’t have occurred to Evvie to actually break anybody’s neck, or even their legs, but given how mental and over-the-top his solutions to ‘people are bothering me’ could be, Jamie was probably lucky it had just been his wand. Sirius had realized that at the time and bustled his friend off. James didn’t really know Evan at all, though, for all the classes they’d had together and despite being technically about as closely related to him as he was to Sirius.

Instead of being a complete fuckwit, thank Merlin, James said, “It’s not about having anything against him, Lily. If you want me to say he’s not as poisonous as the rest of them, fine, as far as we know, he’s not.”

“As far as we know,” Lily repeated, groaning expressively and rolling her eyes. “ _James…”_

“Look, everybody underestimates Pete, and he’s not even Slytherin, okay? And nobody’s got any idea about Remus who hasn’t been told, and even the Tartan doesn’t know he’s not the only one of us that can go all fuzzy, right? I’m just saying, if we don’t know a bloke well, we shouldn’t think we know all about him, that’s all, and we _do_ know he’s got some damn strong connections to some pretty unsavory people, Lily.”

“Your magnanimity is just bowling me over, Sir Galahad, I’ve gone all faint at the knees,” Lily said crossly, but she sat back to let him talk.

“Well there’s luck,” Sirius murmured to Harry. “You’ll be able to beat your mum at head-shoulders-knees-and-toes by age three. ‘Course, that means she won’t be able to help you with your transfig homework, but you’ll have your daddy and your uncles for that, yeah?”

Harry made an enthusiastic _blorftgeee!_ noise, and waved his appendages about because someone was talking at him. Sirius laughed, not trying to hide it because it was perfectly natural to laugh at Harry being spastic-baby, and put the kid on his back to do swimming-legs with him.

There was a pause where he could very nearly feel Mummy and Daddy-Prongs smiling at the side of his neck, and then they’d turned back at each other.

“All right,” Lily sighed. “It’s not about having anything against him?”

“Well, it’s not,” James said stoutly. “It’s just, he said that, and you just _jumped_ at it, which is—I mean, first of all, _yuck,_ Lily—”

Sirius didn’t have to be looking at them or know what they were talking about to know Lily was glaring at Prongs. Definitely a bit thick.

“And Sn—Snape just about jumped _him,_ which is not something a person does because someone’s said something that’s correct and obvious, Lils. That was _bizarre._ That was _Slytherin-bizarre._ ”

“No, that was Sev,” Lily corrected him, magically no longer fussed. She even sounded like she was smiling a bit. “It’s what he said about making Rosier do his abstracts.”

Sirius was _itching_ to turn around and ask questions, but he just kept on moving Harry’s legs about.

“What, that Rosier’s ‘fundamentally lazy?’” James asked dubiously.

Sirius grabbed Harry’s foot and started blowing raspberries on it to keep from snorgling out loud. Evan, in Sirius’s opinion, was only lazy if every Hufflepuff who couldn’t be bothered to try out for Quidditch because classes were hard for them and they were determined to keep up was lazy: all his energy went into doing hard work for his art, and there just wasn’t anything left to be lazy or not-lazy with. But he could see Snivvy thinking that, hear his voice saying exactly those words even without James trying to imitate his climber’s clipped-drawl. Poor Evvie. It was his own doing, because he’d had plenty of chances to pick whoever he wanted, but he deserved so much better.

Not that that was saying much. _Bella_ deserved better than Snape.

“Oh, Jamie,” Lily, sighed, and then she, unusually, sort of giggled. There was a wiggling-around-in-a-chair move, and then she said, in a very stuffy voice that was trying to be lower than she could actually get, “My good man, you see, but you do not observe.” Back in her own voice, “Look, when we were kids, I used to get these magazines with cartoons, that would be…” she trailed off a little helplessly. “Er, really hard to describe…”

“Got all night, Lils,” Jamie said expansively.

“Well.. you’d have, say, a man sitting on a chair smoking a cigar, and a weight drops on his head, and he drops the cigar, which makes a big fire out of some kindling, and the man’s wife is sitting over it, so of course she gets angry and sharpens this big knife she has on a grindstone she’s sitting in front of, and that turns a wheel that lowers a ladle into and out of this _really giant_ bottle of olives. And then there’s something just as complicated with a glass-cutter and an alarm clock if you don’t get an olive out in the first fifteen seconds, I think it was.”

Silence. With which Sirius was in complete sympathy.

“Well, exactly,” Lily evidently answered Jamie’s probably goggle-eyed look. “But it was _supposed_ to be silly, James, it was a _cartoon,_ it was just for fun. There were loads of them. They were brilliant, they were really popular with muggles. And Sev thought they were stupid, but, you know, you’d think he wouldn’t read them if he thought they were that stupid. But he _would_ read them, he _always_ read them, and then he’d stare at them for quite a long time looking like he couldn’t _believe_ anyone could be that stupid, and then he’d start shouting, ‘Use a fishing pole! Tip the bottle over! Use the damn glass-cutter in the first place! Go to the bloody store and get a normal-sized bottle!’” With a grinning voice, she said, “Really, it was a better show than the cartoons. He’d stew over it for _hours._ ”

“Er?” James asked helplessly.

“Well, three times out of five, one of the things he’d shout at the magazine was, ‘The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple! You know who said that, you clutterpated nitwit? Albert Einstein said that! You’re not clever, you’re just making a mess!’”

“…Er?” James said again, more helplessly yet. Only, this time, Sirius thought he could have helped poor old Prongs if he hadn’t been pretending he wasn’t listening.

“Jamie, Sev acted that way because he thought Evan had taken a big messy tangle and made it very simple. Which he thinks is the cleverest thing you can do. It wasn’t Slytherin-bizarre, it was Ravenclaw-impressed. And before you start, or say _yuck_ to me again, I think Rosier was absolutely right and you ought to be _grateful_.”

 _Whoops_ , Sirius thought silently, distracted from wondering when Lily had started using his cousin’s first name, which she certainly hadn’t done while they were prefects together. _You were doing okay until that last bit, Dandelioness._ No one liked being told to be grateful. It was a surefire way to make anyone resentful. He ought to know. It was one of the things he liked best about Jamie’s parents: Cousin Dorea was smarter and nicer than to ever even hint that Sirius was _supposed_ to be grateful to her, and it wouldn’t have ever even occurred to Charlus.

“Oh, ought I?” asked James, bristling.

“Yes, you ought!” Lily fired back. Sirius half-suspected she had her hands on her hips, but he didn’t quite dare look up from Harry to check. “You made Sev’s life hell because—”

“Because he’s a nasty piece of work, Lily!”

“Oh, be honest with yourself if you won’t be with me,” Lily snapped. Sirius more than half-seriously considered pulling a Reggie and taking Harry to hide behind the sofa or something. “You made his life hell because you’re from a Gryffindor family, and when he said on the train that Gryffindor has its bad points you took it personally even though you hadn’t been Sorted yet, and then you lot kept ratcheting it up, and because _you thought he fancied me._ ”

“Well, he does!” James shouted. “Even when he takes up with a bloke, look who he takes up with! Red hair, green eyes, it’s not exactly alchemical technomancy!”

“Oh, brilliant, shout louder, I don’t think they heard you in Hyde Park,” Lily snarled. “That wasn’t your business, Sirius!”

“What?” Sirius called back, making himself sound confused, as if he hadn’t been following, as he picked Harry up and came into the kitchen. “What, you mean that Snivvy and Evan are shagging? That’s old news, Columbine; Evvie was snogging him right in front of all the Blacks and Rosiers at King’s Cross after we graduated. Damn good impression of the Giant Squid, actually. Sniv might like to keep things quiet, but you can’t make a louder announcement than that without, I dunno, actually throwing a formal engagement party or taking out a column in the Prophet.”

James was gaping at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

Sirius looked at him like he was crazy. “What do you care if they’re shagging or just sharing a flat, as long as you can keep tabs on him in case he kills somebody?” he asked. Lily made an irritable steam-engine noise, which was clueless of her. James was hardly going to listen to anyone on the subject of Snivvy, even Sirius, if he didn’t feel rock-sure that they fundamentally agreed with him. “You and Violet here were already talking about whether you wanted to live here or in London or closer to Lily’s family and planning where to hide when your mums started fighting over the flower arrangements. Speaking of fighting, what are you two on about now?”

“Rosier,” James spat resentfully, “called Snape my _brother in law._ ”

Sirius blinked. Eventually, he said, “Well, he’s done nuttier things to make people stop fighting.”

Then he had to try and start explaining, “No, really. _Really._ F’rexample, just off the top of my head? There was this one time when Andi and Uncle Cygnus were really going at it when we were kids, must have been the end of second year, or maybe Christmas hols? Just before Andi never came back from shoe-shopping and wrote to say she was pregnant and marrying the mudblood —’scuse me, Lily, that’s what she said, she was pissed _right_ the fuck off—and sod almost-all of us and don’t bother cutting her off with a knut, she was done with us first, anyway.”

He grinned reminiscently.  It hadn’t taken the _I won’t mean you, kiddo_ patronus-message that had visited him before the Howler hit to tell him she hadn’t, he didn’t think, but it had been nice of her anyway.  Thoughtful, if not a badly-needed reassurance.  And it had been great fun watching half the family eye each other warily in stolen moments, trying to work out who else had gotten one, and hilarious when he’d figured out that actually it was only her dad and crazier sister and Sirius’s mother that Andromeda had honestly burned her bridges with.  

It had been even funnier to watch everyone else’s reactions when they’d figured that out.  Headachy, mostly, on the pissier side in Cissy’s case and the gently perplexed in Evan’s, although Reggie never _had_ worked it out and had just sat around looking terrified and heartbroken and refusing to look at anybody at all for half the rest of the week, poor little squit.

Sirius had meant to explain things to him, but Cissy had grabbed his wrist and started hissing at him about how if Reggie had a sudden change of heart, both of the bitches who thought they were his mum (Cissy hadn’t put it like that, and of course one of them _was_ Reg’s mother) would notice and start asking questions and then it would be a hundred times harder to do _anything_ for Andi. Sirius hadn’t felt compelled to be polite about being manhandled and told how to handle his own little brother, but he’d had to admit the know-it-all bossyboots had a point.

“Yeah, before that. _Lots_ of Andi and Uncle Cygnus shrieking at each other. I expect Evvie had got sick of it. He just put down his charms homework and made the footstool he was sitting on really tall and started scribbling all over the ceiling. With these greasy crayon-y things, pastels. Clouds and birds and fat pink babies with wings and trumpets and that. I think they were supposed to be trumpets, as I recall they looked sort of—anyway, they were a pain in the arse to get out of the plaster, I remember that, I expect they were charmed. And when Uncle Cygnus tried to yell at him, we all got this art history lecture that went on so long they couldn’t even _remember_ what they’d been fighting about, it was as bad as _Binns._

“Seriously, Prongs, having a fight around Evvie with anyone he’s even vaguely interested in is just a bad, bad idea. He doesn’t know how to do anything normally, so as far as I can tell he just does the first thing that springs to mind. And he’s got a _really, really strange mind._ ”

“…Er, okay,” James said dubiously after a while, “but the madness running scrambled-egg-and-spoon races through your extended family aside, the point is, Lily and Snape are both _agreeing_ with him, Padfoot.”

Sirius tilted his head. “Well, I quite see how that’s revolting, since it’d make him my brother in law too and the thought makes _me_ want to retch—no offense, Lils.”

“Oh, none taken, I’m sure, twinkletoes,” Lily said dryly. Probably _because_ he’d used her right name, the saucy wench.

“Oh, good, ta—but, Prongs, speaking as somebody who’s used to having a completely revolting family, who all find _my_ family completely revolting… I don’t think it’s up to you, mate.” He shrugged resignedly. “I mean, I’d like to gag and shout with you and everything, but if I get to pick mine and Andi gets to pick hers, and you get to pick me and Moony and Pete and Lily—and you know milady fair’d have at least three of your grandparents turning over in their graves even if your actual parents are decent folk—we can’t say she doesn’t get to pick hers just because _we_ think it’s a bloody awful choice, can we? And hey, Sniv’s still not much worse than my mother, right?”

“Well, now we’ve got that sorted,” Lily said decisively, ignoring Prongs’s _hell NO we don’t have that sorted_ expression in favor of giving Sirius a wary _I don’t know what to make of you right now_ look. Sirius didn’t know what that was about: he thought he’d been perfectly clear.

She probably shouldn’t have ignored James, though, because he exploded, “We do _not_ have that sorted! Just because Snape’s found someone who’s too out of it to notice he’s just settling for him doesn’t mean he’s not still mad about you, Lily, and this is just giving him an excuse to latch onto you again and say it’s all perfectly innocent!”

“James Potter, Evan Rosier has been mad at me about Sev since fourth year,” Lily began crossly.

“Third,” Sirius muttered under his breath, jiggling Harry.

Not noticing, she surged on, “and he’s _still_ mad at me about Sev! The last thing he wants to do is make it easy for us to be friends, believe me; he makes it _very clear_ he doesn’t think I’m good for him.”

“Excuse ME?!” James demanded, incensed, slamming his palms down on the breakfast table and starting to rise.

Sirius started to laugh.

“What?” James asked, faltering into wounded.

“Prongs, you actually want to be happy about that,” he pointed out, grinning.

“I—Oh, yeah, I do,” James agreed, sitting down again. “Even if I also want to slap Rosier in the face with a glove now.”

“I wouldn’t,” Sirius advised. “Even Bella never actually hit him or Reggie. I mean, Narcissa used to kick everybody, but that was just Cissy being a brat, nobody took it seriously. I don’t think I’d want to know what he’d do if someone hit him, off the Quidditch pitch. I mean, Reg would probably just dissolve, but like I said, Evvie’s _weird_.”

“Er… he went into a sort of trance and started painting himself with the slap mark, actually,” Lily said sheepishly. “And then started glaring at Jamie for no apparent reason and growing pointy homicidal-looking vines out of his sleeves until Sev hit him with a dormus and dragged him off to… it must have been their bedroom. Um.”

Sirius blinked at her, and then asked Harry, “What’s it like to be a baby and nothing’s complicated or confusing? Is it nice when all you have to think about is where’s mummy with my new nappy?”

Harry waved his hands around, possibly trying to grab Sirius’s chin. He brought the kid closer, obligingly, and was sorry when a tiny and rather slimy much-sucked-on hand smacked into his eye, instead, and the other one started tugging on his hair.

“No, but hang on,” Prongs persisted. “If he doesn’t want you to be friends, why would he say that?”

“Well, it felt true as soon as I heard it, so maybe he’s just smarter than you think,” Lily retorted.

“Or maybe,” Sirius suggested, smirking without humor, “he’s Black enough to know that anybody who fights as cold as you and Snivvy do but still don’t really want to be shot of each other, even after that much emotional blackmail, can’t be anything _but_ family.”

“Excuse me, why are we all ignoring that _Snape has always fancied my wife?”_ James called loudly to the ceiling, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“Because you’re the only one who’s ever thought that,” Lily snapped. “ _Ever_.”

“Well, _that’s_ not true,” Sirius told her. “Sorry, but most people have thought that. Often.”

“Well, I can’t help it if most people at Hogwarts have dirty minds,” she further snapped. “Most people we knew as kids gave Sev a very hard time for trying to be _just_ my friend _without_ fancying me. _For_ not fancying me, I mean. His da was just awful about it. If he had at all, it would have been much easier for him to try something than not to. I’m telling you, Jamie, the only time he’s ever even tried to think of me that way is when someone makes him think he’s supposed to. I’ve _watched_ him try, back in fourth year, and his face went all funny.”

“Er, Lily,” Sirius felt he had to put in, “in fourth year, he spent all the time he didn’t spend trying to make you think he wasn’t a slimy piece of rubbish—or being one—trying to kill everyone Evvie snogged with his eyes.”

James stared, but Sirius didn’t look apologetic at him, or even shrug unapologetially. He hadn’t worked out what that was really about until a drunk-off-his-face Evvie had draped himself all over Sniv at the vodka tasting and _nuzzled_ at him, and Sniv Touch Not The Kneazle Without A Glove Snape had repeatedly failed to knock him on his arse. And then for the entire nightmarish, breathless month after Sirius’s horrific drunken fuckup Evvie had trailed after the apparently-sleepwalking-Snape like he’d been lashed to him by the eyelids, biting his lip the whole time. Sirius hadn’t been able to help exchanging a couple of incredulous _do these morons actually think they’re subtle_ and _dear Merlin is the rest of this school completely blind_ glances with Cissy, even though they hadn’t been especially on speaking terms while at school for years by that point.

(It wasn’t ‘being on speaking terms’ when your pretty-pretty ice-princess of a cousin ambushed you with a petrificus and nailed you against the greenhouse pane with her wand so you could hear the Venomous Tentacula on the other side, battering the suddenly rather thin-sounding glass trying to get at you, and made it very clear to you in very small words exactly what would happen to your adorable little chubby friend, whose incomprehensible success at getting dates meant he spent more time out from under your wing than was perhaps _quite_ advisable, if your mutual cousin—who’d turned into really quite a nice boy, wouldn’t you agree, Siri, and didn’t deserve it, and surely it wasn’t very Gryffindor to go after innocent people, let alone people who were, you know, _innocent,_ as in touched in the head and too vacuous to even think about playing games—if your mutual cousin became a bone of contention in your stupid, _stupid_ pissing contest with Snape—which had long since stopped being funny and got tedious and was starting to annoy her, Sirius, she did hope you realized that—and got hurt.)

During fourth year, though, Sirius had just thought Narcissa had told Snivellus to glare at Evan’s dates, to see if any of them could hold up under the strain (nope). It had been a perfectly reasonable thing to think. It was exactly the kind of thing pureblood women who’d been made to feel they were Responsible For Their Families did all the time for their dimmer relatives, and Sniv would have wanted to do the kinds of favors for her that friends could do for each other without considerations of station and cash flow entering into the equation.

He’d been so obviously touchy and unhappy about the way Cissy and Reg were aeons above him that Sirius, before he’d figured out that his own Housemates would not approve of that particular tactic, hadn’t had the heart to needle him about it. Later he would have liked to pull it out, of course, when he was frantic over Reggie and thought maybe if he could get _Snape_ away from the little idiot he’d have a chance at talking some sense into him, even if there was no getting him away from Bella, and would have used any weapons he could get his hands on. But by then he knew that a good Gryffindor was just not supposed to think that way (even if he knew for a fact that plenty of very respectable older ones did), so all he could do was slide insinuations into mocking Sniv’s dress sense.

He’d known Sniv would pick up on them. If that meant Sniv thought Sirius was actually a snob and _believed_ there was something wrong with not having money or whatever, Sirius had been prepared to live with that if it would get the greaseball to falter a little when it came to Reggie. What did Sirius care about Snape’s opinion?

Unfortunately, not only hadn’t it worked, but it had made Moony, who should have known better, a little sensitive about moving in with him without having a steady job, once it wasn’t all four of them together anymore.  

It had also, a little more explicably, made Lily think he’d swallowed his family’s garbage, which had been a pain when the two of them finally had to accept that they’d probably be seeing a lot of each other even after Hogwarts. And not just because she thought he might have swallowed their garbage about muggleborns, too, which was ridiculous when he’d been the first to make a record player work on the Hogwarts grounds.

After she got through looking cross with him over ‘slimy piece of rubbish,’ Lily grinned. “I know,” she said. “I think that’s why he tried. You know, when everything’s miserable so you try to think about somebody else, because you think it’d be easier if you could make it be them?” Sirius tried not to snort as he watched James try to fit that idea into his fist-sized ruminant brain. “I think it made his head go _bzzztblargh_ a little.”

“You still went to Professor Trimble’s stupid Valentine’s Ball with him,” Prongs accused sullenly.

“So? You two went together,” Lily said, as if she didn’t see any difference.

“Er, as _friends,_ ” Sirius hastened to clarify.

It had actually technically been the three of them going together (so Prongs wouldn’t kill himself or anybody else over Evans going with Snape) while Pete went with Clarice Whateverhernamewas from Hufflepuff, if you wanted to be specific, but Moony had got bored early on and left to go finish up some paper or other. Had left as soon as he’d had enough to eat and sat through exactly one and a half songs with one of his incredulous expressions, Sirius remembered with a private smile. Maybe ‘bored’ hadn’t quite been it, on reflection.

“Yes, Si-ri-us,” Lily said, back to talking slow for the lame-brained, “ex-act-ly. As _friends._ ” At a more normal speed, she added, “Mostly because I wanted to look at Flitwick’s decorations and Sev thought half the school was going to try to spike the punch without talking to each other and the teachers were too stupid to stop it—”

“They were,” James assured her smugly.

“No,” Sirius argued, “be fair, Dumbledore thought the Pomfrey could handle it and the Pomfrey thought it would teach us never to drink again, and Sluggy thought he knew who to stop to end up with punch he’d like.”

They Looked at him.

“You know he did,” Sirius insisted.

“…come to think of it, Ben Goldstein said he couldn’t wait to see what Rookwood had come up with, and I don’t think that ever came off,” Lily said thoughtfully. “Anyway, Sev thought the teachers weren’t _going_ to stop it, and we both did want to see if the Hobgoblins were any good.”

“They’re all right,” Sirius said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic.

“Actual hobgoblins have more rhythm, Sirius,” she said, looking pained.

“Yeah, all right, fair play to you when it comes to Trencher, but Boardman—”

“Oh, don’t even _try_ to tell me you’d even put him in a _class_ with Robert Plant.”

“Look, as wizarding music goes—”

“Oh, well, as _wizarding_ music goes—”

“If you two groupies are quite finished…” James drummed his fingers on the table.

“Yes?” Sirius prompted helpfully.

“Then I might not have to confiscate your eyeliner,” James finished primly.

“And what would you do with it, O mighty Head Boy?” Sirius grinned.

“Some things are not for mortal man to know,” said Lily, so even more primly that James must have picked it up from her.

“Oh, baby, baby,” Sirius replied solemnly.

Because there are some compelling prompts too powerful to be squelched by the weight of disinterested reality, even in prosaic Cornish kitchens with tiny embroidered snitches zooming predictably all over the curtains, Harry chose that moment to announce the arrival of some manner of what must, from his volume, have been profound discomfort. Sirius hastened to pass him off to his mum before he started to smell, leak, or become outraged over Sirius’s lack of mammary glands and reach eardrum-piercing decibels.

While Lily bustled off to deal with him, Sirius slid into her seat and asked, “What the buggery?”

James’s mouth tugged into the _I don’t think real The People actually swear like that, Padfoot_ grin. “I knew you were listening.”

“Well, yeah, you didn’t put anything up, wasn’t I supposed to?”

James didn’t bother to answer that, which meant yes-but-if asked-we’re-telling-Lily-I-just-forgot. He just launched into explaining (ranting) about how Lily had made him spend what at least _felt_ like his whole afternoon in a much too small space to be in with Snivellus for that long, especially a Snivellus who had apparently gone _completely off his rocker_ in about a dozen ways—okay, not at once, for once, but consecutively—and kept doing a quite disturbingly good impression of a human being, which James hadn’t trusted _at all_ (James looked too unnerved for Sirius to quite believe he hadn’t been even a little bit convinced, even if he had, naturally, known better than to blithely believe) but Lily had swallowed hook, line, and sinker.

And about how he minded that less—well, almost less—than that she was making him do it to help Snivvy out, and that was where Rosier calling Snivvy James’s brother in law had come in: Rosier had said everything was peachy because James only had to help Snivellus out and didn’t have to like him. Sirius nodded his understanding at this point and James squint-eyed at him like he was both crazy and a traitor. Which was all right for James, who was an only child with parents who were, at least by Sirius’s standards, completely fantastic, if a bit on the creaky side.

After getting the _look_ from Sirius that conveyed that sentiment, James decided to leave well enough alone and went on to further rant about how the helping was disgusting enough, because all right, Sniv _had_ been in a state and a bloke should be charitable but it really rankled that Lily had been _pushing_ like that, what with the whole Lily and Snivellus thing—

“Look,” Sirius interrupted. “If you want to go after him because he’s a foul piece of Dark toerag that’s dived headfirst through an oil slick and we’re pretty damn sure the only reason we haven’t been able to prove he’s a Death Eater is because he’s slippery, what with the oil slick, I’m with you all the way, Prongs. But the girl just had your fawn-spawn and is wearing your surname and all and _she_ doesn't think of _him_ like that. Besides, even if you’re right about how he feels, the worst he’s ever worked himself up to do to her is call her names. He didn’t even stalk her after she told him she wasn’t listening to apologies and he should shove off. If a creep is going to stalk a bird he’s obsessed with and do things she doesn’t want, it’s going to start when she chucks him and hurts his pride. You’re not worried about Lily wanting _Snivellus,_ for pity’s sake, are you?” he scoffed.

“Well, no,” James said, not sounding a hundred percent sure about it. “I mean, she’s not out of her mind. Er, mostly. It’s only, she’s got a soft spot for him, and—”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she’s _attracted_ to the greaseball,” Sirius pointed out. “I mean, who would be?”

“Your cousin, apparently,” James said dryly.

“I told you, Evvie’s mental,” he waved that away. “Besides, they were roommates at school, and you know how you sort of stop seeing what other people look like when you see them every day, unless you really start noticing. Go on, tell me what color Pete’s eyes are.”

“Er… blue,” James said, raising an eyebrow at him. “Not a very blue blue, I grant you, but…”

Sirius grumbled something about Seekers under his breath.

Four-Eyes good-naturedly repeated the comment, substituting the phrase ‘color-blind mutts.’

Sirius yahed at him, and then leaned forward to show he was done fooling around for a minute. “Prongs,” he said patiently. “You know you’re pissing Lily right off every time you go on about this, yeah? It’s like you’re saying you don’t trust her as your wife.”

James jerked back. Shied, you might say. “Of course I do!” he sputtered.

“Then you might want to stop telling her you don’t,” Sirius suggested, putting his eyebrows up humorously.

“It’s _Snivellus_ I don’t trust,” he said hotly.

“Yeah, I got that, Prongs,” Sirius sighed. “But honestly, would you stop, please? We’ve got about a bazillion things to worry about when it comes to Snivvy, and whether or not he’s got the hots for Daffydowndilly is not one of them, because I swear, even if he does, he doesn’t have the balls to do anything about it if she doesn’t want him to. Which is where the not-trusting her bit comes in. Because, mate, if she tells him no it’s no, and you know it. He’s never had the balls to so much as say boo to her unless he was already off his nut, and even then she just has to glare at him and he puts his tail between his legs.”

James gave him a do-you-really-think-so wanting to be convinced look.

Sirius nodded emphatically. “So could you, please, focus, what with the giants attacking for no earthly reason and people disappearing off the streets and Dumbledore not letting us in on his plots enough to do anything about anything? Because I have to tell you, mate, I’ve got a strong suspicion that he’d be a little more likely to if he didn’t think you’d drop everything and leave a mission if you thought Snivvy had left work to do his shopping five minutes early.”

Now James’s expression had a strong undertone of _actually, you’re the problem, mate, and I wish I could tell you things to fix it but something’s stopping me and I’m really frustrated._

Which wasn’t actually all that interesting, because Sirius knew perfectly well that Dumbledore had been Really Not Impressed with his judgment or ability to Not Be A Black since the aforementioned drunken fuckup. He was sort of hoping that getting James focused would help there, if he could do it, because it was frankly about sodding time and if he _could_ do it Dumbledore bloody well _should_ be impressed.

What James actually said, though, was, “That’s the other thing.”

“What is?”

“Work. Because what she made me help him do was pack, because he’s going to be,” James finger-quoted, “helping Slughorn next year.”

Sirius sat back and blinked. “How’d the Old Man swing that?” he asked admiringly.

“I don’t know,” James snarled, “but if I hadn’t promised—wait. What do you mean, how’d _Dumbledore_ swing that?” he blinked. “I mean, did you mean Dumbledore?”

“Well, yeah,” Sirius blinked back, and they stared at each other for a moment, mutually puzzled. It was a bit like being back in first year again, although this did happen now and again. “It was his idea, wasn’t it?” he asked uncertainly.

Just as uncertainly, James said, “I assumed Snivellus greased his way into it.”

“You thought _Snivellus_ fooled _Dumbledore?”_ Sirius gaped. “Jamie, why the hell would Sniv ever even want to go anywhere near Scotland ever again? I wouldn’t, if I were him. Except maybe to torch it, since I’d be him. Eurgh. I need to give my brain a wash now.”

“On orders from Picks His Warts to get close to Dumbledore and corrupt all the kids and that, of course,” James said in a disbelieving _you’re not usually this dense, Paddy_ voice.

“…Oh, yeah, well, I guess there’s that,” Sirius said dubiously. “I suppose the Pants Eaters could actually be that stupid. I suppose that’s why Snape let Dumbledore talk him into it.”

“Why would Dumbledore _want_ to talk him into it?” James threw up his hands, spluttering again.

“Maybe he finally listened to you,” Sirius proposed, although he didn’t actually think James’s opinion would have been more than a small part of Dumbledore’s decision. “…Stags don’t eat flies, Prongs, you might want to close your mouth.”

“If he finally listened to me about Sniv he wouldn’t let him anywhere _near_ little kids,” James protested, although he did stop unattractively gaping.

“Why not, if it’s in Hogwarts?” Sirius shrugged. “With portraits in every room who’d raise bloody murder if anyone tried to muck about with them, and elves all over the place, and most of even the Slytherin kids would be perfectly happy to get, putting it how they’d see it only nicer, an ugly half-blood climber of no family and less personality who’ll probably be bullying the hell out of them into trouble? Safest place in the world to keep your enemy close and under watch, Hogwarts. If you’re Dumbledore, anyway.”

“…That’s a point,” James said thoughtfully, sitting back, although he still looked troubled.

“Well, I am a genius,” Sirius agreed comfortably, lacing his hands behind his head, and nearly tipped his chair over when James chucked the salt-shaker at him. You shouldn’t have Seekers’ eyes and a Chasers’ throwing arm in one bespectacled git, it just wasn’t right.

“Idiot savant, possibly,” said Lily out of nowhere from behind Sirius, patting his head and making him nearly tip over again out of surprise.

“Where’s Harry?” James asked. “Sleeping?”

Lily nodded. “He’s had a very exciting day, the lamb,” she said fondly. “All new things to look at _and_ he got to play with his Uncle Padfoot. Tigger curled up with him. Don’t worry, I took pictures.”

James, who had risen excitedly at the earth-shattering news about the cat, reluctantly subsided, and pulled out a new chair for Lily.

Sirius rolled his eyes tolerantly at the amazing bouncing Daddy Prongs, and addressed himself to Lily. “What I can’t get my head around,” he said, “is what Evan could possibly have done to make you slap him. I mean, he barely _moves_ most of the time, let alone talks.”

“Did Jamie tell you Sev is moving to Hogwarts?” Lily asked, turning upset.

“Yes, Prongs told me that Snape has decided to add masochism to his collection of sadism, misanthropy, fuckoffery, sneerificness, Dark Arts obsession—”

“Oh, shut it, Sirius,” she said crossly. “He’s moving back by himself.”

“…Right?” Sirius blinked.

She glared at him. “Suppose you’d never _ever_ lived anywhere nicer or safer or better for you than your parents’ house before you moved into your flat with Remus, Sirius. And then suppose I found out you had to move back into Grimmauld Place, and you were going alone. Do you think I’d just let Remus get away with that? Especially if he acted like he didn’t see a problem with it while you were staring at your suitcases, looking like you were about to throw up!”

“…Mm,” Sirius grunted uncomfortably, when his chest had loosened enough, and stood. “Anyone want a butterbeer?” he asked, heading over to the cold box and rooting around. He refused to think about what kind of glance they might be exchanging behind his back.

“Yeah, I’ll have one,” James said. “Lils?”

“All right. Hot, please.”

“What _I_ don’t understand,” James told Lily while Sirius passed the glasses around and sat down to curl up around his, “is why you stopped being mad at him, if you care that much about it.”

Lily looked deeply put on the spot, and as if she would have been squirming if they’d all been younger. “Sev doesn’t want me to be,” she said, in a voice that wasn’t quite mutinous yet but was going to get there fast if Jamie kept pressing her. “And it’s up to him, isn’t it?”

More to stop James than because he was really worried about it, Sirius looked up sharply and asked, “You wouldn’t tell Snape anything that personal about any of us, would you? I know I asked but…” he squirmed a little himself. “I wasn’t asking for _that_ much, Lily, I mean, that’s not really on. I mean, there _are_ limits—”

James’s eyebrows asked, _such as? When we’re discussing Snivvy?_

“—And he’s such a snide little prick, sometimes a bloke can’t remember them in time.”

When he dragged his gaze up from his butterbeer, she was staring at him. To his deep unease, he saw that her eyes were a little wet. He could hear James’s disgusting, besotted brain trying to perpetrate poetry about dewy leaves all the way from across the table.

She scooted her chair over. To his further unease and, indeed, confused dismay, she gave him, for the first time since the wedding, a long, hard hug that said she really meant it. “Okay, Sirius,” she said softly. “Okay. I’ll help Remus look after it for you.”

“…Er… what?” he asked warily.

She tilted a smile up at him that was at once a bit watery and a bit cheeky. “Your honor.”

“Oh good _Godric,_ ” Sirius exclaimed in horror, screeching his chair back a few feet. “JAAAMES, your bird’s lost the plot!”

Lily scooted over the other way to hug James instead, laughing. He wrapped his arm around her, looking bemused, and shrugged a shrug at Sirius that said, _I said she’s a goddess, I never said she wasn’t a nutter_.

“So,” Lily asked, settling herself comfortably, “what are you fighting with Remus about this week, anyway?”

“Who said I’m fighting with Moony?” Sirius scoffed.

“Er… you, when you came over to our house to kip on the sofa without bothering to floo first to find out if we were home or out or shagging on said sofa or what,” James filled him in helpfully, and got smacked on the arm.

“Apparently it’s ‘insensitive’ to try to think of ways to help a person when he’s set on moping,” Sirius sulked.

“Ah,” Lily said wisely. “The Thing Men Do Not Understand.”

Sirius peered at her suspiciously. “This sounds like a Witch Weekly thing,” he said dubiously.

“No, it’s a What Every Girl Stops Trying To Explain By The Time She’s On Her Third Boyfriend thing,” Lily said sympathetically.

“Try me,” Sirius challenged, cross.

“Sirius, sometimes people already know what they want to do, or they want to work a problem out on their own, or they think they’ll get it by themselves if they can just think about it and talk it out. But they want to talk about it anyway, even without being drunk off their arses, and sometimes they’d rather talk to someone they trust than a complete stranger who doesn’t care about them. And then the person, who of course they trust for a reason, wants to _help,_ because everyone wants to help when a person they care about is having trouble, right? But actually that’s not at all helpful because they’re not looking for _practical_ help, they just want to talk about it with someone who cares. And when someone tries to tell you what you ought do when you don’t want advice, it’s not so much helpful as really, _really_ annoying.”

Sirius looked at James, who just shrugged unhelpfully, so he asked, “Er… but if you’re not looking for help with the problem, why are you asking someone to talk it through with you? Bit of a waste of everyone’s time, innit?”

Lily sighed.

“Anyway, he _wasn’t_ trying to talk to me,” Sirius added huffily. “He was just _moping._ ”

“Well, wouldn’t you be depressed, too? It’s awful news, Sirius. Sev came and told him in person—and _no,_ Sirius, it wasn’t to gloat, he just thought it was his, I don’t know, his duty or something not to let Rey find out from the Prophet. And he thinks they’re going to say the funding’s being cut because the potion’s good now, and it’s not. Not good, that is.”

“Yeah, I would be depressed,” Sirius agreed, “and I hope you lot wouldn’t just let me _stew_ in it.”

“Well, no,” James agreed. “On account of when you sit and stew, you stare out the window and go all crazy-eyed and come up with mad ideas about getting even that get me into detention for a month and in trouble with Lily for _six_ months.”

“Hear, hear,” Lily toasted him with her butterbeer.

“Moony just sits and broods through all his really depressing books until he’s out of tea and sick of cocoa and he’s depressed himself too much to stand it anymore, and then he tells himself he’s a broody twit and joins the human race again,” James went on. “It’s no good telling him he is one before he’s ready to stop, you know it’s not.”

“I didn’t tell him he was a broody twit,” Sirius protested. “I just said if we all put our heads together we could probably think of something new to try, or a new funding source, or something, and then he told me to sod off.”

Lily glanced at James, who looked a bit helpless. “Maybe you could,” she said gently. “But, you know, Remus spent half his life with his parents dragging him from one new ‘cure’ to another.”

“I know,” Sirius said, frustrated, “but this one was actually getting results, wasn’t it, even if it’s not completely safe yet? It’s _stupid_ to give up on it just because the politics are being uncooperative.”

“I don’t know,” she said gloomily. “There’s a big difference between ‘we haven’t found the way it’s possible yet’ and ‘it’s inches from being magically possible but The People Who Really Run Things are actively against me.’ That’s a whole different kind of depressing.”

“That shouldn’t be depressing,” Sirius snarled, “that should _piss him off!_ ”

She shot him an angry look. “Oh, yes,” she agreed, standing up, “a pureblooded man who’s always had all his teachers eating out of his hand and hasn’t ever been short of gold without someone to go to can afford to think that. It’s not so easy when you grow up being patronized or having to hide something huge about who you are and being at the mercy of everyone who knows, or knowing there are only so many jobs that’ll be open to someone like you, or knowing that if you aren’t really nice to the right sorts of people your life will be _horrible_ because there isn’t anything about you that makes people say Oh Dear, Saying No To Him Could Make Problems For Me.”

“Er… Lily?” James asked tentatively. Which, as far as Sirius was concerned, proved he’d been Sorted correctly right there.

She glared at them both. “Some people,” she said angrily, “learn there’s no _use_ getting angry, because there’s nothing they can _do_ about it that won’t make things worse for themselves in the long run. So they _get depressed_.”

“You’re not like that!” James protested.

“You’re bloody right I’m not,” she agreed, sticking her fists on her hips belligerently. “I’m a witch from a family of muggles, most of whom are rather lovely most of the time.”

“Sorry, we’re not talking about your sister, though, here, right?”

She ignored that, and pressed on. “I couldn’t count my blessings on my _hair._ _Remus_ is a secret _leper_.”

“Lycanthrope,” Sirius corrected her warily. He was a Gryffindor too, damn it.

“ _Might as well be the same thing!_ ”

“But there _isn’t_ nothing he can do,” Sirius argued. “And he hasn’t got no one, he’s got _us,_ and we can—”

“What, Sirius?” she asked, the anger going out of her on a long sigh, leaving her only tired. “Is there a ‘what’? Because I think this might be a bit last-straw for our Remus, and unless you can offer him something more solid than ‘we’re brilliant, we’ll think of something,’ maybe you’d better not try to tell him to fly for the moon, d’you think? Because I think maybe he’s learned better by now, and maybe, just _maybe_ , he thinks it isn’t kind of you to make him hope.”

“Maybe I don’t care about being _kind_ if it means giving up on him,” Sirius fired back, leaning forward angrily over his glass.

That rubbed her the wrong way again, apparently. “What do you mean, giving up on _him_?” she demanded, indignant. “He’s been your friend for years, but what, only if he promises he’ll stop being a werewolf someday?”

“Yeah, because telling someone they can be your friend if they only promise to stop being what they are really _works,_ doesn’t it, Hibiscus?” Sirius asked sarcastically, and had the pleasure of seeing her turn at least two colors in temper. “Don’t be _stupid._ I don’t care that he turns into a wolf every month, I care that he _hates it,_ and I care that he _rips himself to shreds_ anytime Padfoot can’t be there with him, because Prongs can only calm him down when the wolf’s willing to _be_ calmed down; a deer can’t _sit_ on a werewolf like a great honking Grim-sized Newfie can; and Wormy’s almost no use at all by himself.”

“And were you planning not to be there anytime soon?” she challenged him, ruffling up even more.

“Of _course_ I’m not,” he nearly shouted in vexation.  “But if you haven’t noticed, things are getting really _nasty_ out there, and we could find ourselves in an out-and-out civil war any day now, or peppered with much bolder guerrilla strikes than they’re pulling now, against anybody they decide to go after, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning to crawl under my bed till it’s over, assuming it ever _is_ over in any way we can stand, and Moony wouldn’t _want_ me to!  But that means Remus might not have me or _any_ of us to transform with him at some point, what with werewolves being pretty damn sturdy if you don’t know that’s what they are when you go after them, thank Merlin, whereas magic can’t _get killed!_ ”

“…Oh, I see,” she said, more subdued and looking tired and sad again, and also shaken. “But, Sirius, you still have to think about it like… if somebody breaks their leg, you can’t just ask them to get up and start fighting again straightaway. You’ve got to give them time to heal first, or they’ll just get hurt worse without doing any good at all.”

“Er, Lily,” James said, tentative again, after a moment where he exchanged a _you remind her, no you, no you, no you’re the chump who married her_ glance with Sirius. “Er, there is such a thing as an ossio consano charm _,_ you know.”

She threw up her hands in complete disgust, declared, “ _Wizards,_ ” and stomped into Harry’s room, slamming the door.

“ _I_ don’t think we’re missing the point,” James told Sirius woundedly. “Do you think we’re missing the point?”

“I’m not missing it,” Sirius said with forced cheer, “I’m just ignoring it,” and, draining the rest of his butterbeer, went to pour himself another one. “So. I was thinking, what if we enchanted some cloth with hex-zappers?”

“Like clothing, for armor?” James asked, dragging his cow-eyes away from where Lily had disappeared and starting to look interested. “We haven’t finished stabilizing the probity probes yet, don’t forget.”

“No, I know, but we’ve been butting our heads up against it for weeks and not getting anywhere. Probably better to put it on simmer for a while and get a couple easier new products out there before Zonko stops asking us when we _will_ have anything new, yeah?  Maybe clothing,” Sirius nodded, waggling his hand, “but I’m not sure something that low-power would be that useful over a broad area. I mean, a hex-zapper deflects spells until it gets a direct hit and then that uses it up, right?”

“Right,” James nodded, propping a hand on his chin and summoning his notebook with a flick of his wand. “Except for attracting healing and good luck sort of energies if you believe those exist and are, I don’t know, floating around or whatever those Seer-obsessed types think.”

“Right. I suppose they might do, if you’re around a ley line or on an old wizarding House’s land or what-have-you, providing it isn’t a house like Mumsy Dearest’s.”

“Suppose so,” James nodded. “Your parents’ house does have sort of a nasty feel even when they’re not home, and Mum and Dad’s place is always cozy-ish, isn’t it?”

“Well, I think so. Anyway, _I_ thought, what if we made hex-zapping bandages? And if they look like ordinary bandages, we could bake in a heavy discount for muggleborns, so if their families get harassed they might not have to get taken to St. Mungo’s and probably have more time than is healthy obliviated.”

James looked judicious. “Bandages are a good idea,” he said slowly. “We should get on that. I don’t know how much good having them would really do a muggle family that gets attacked, Padfoot.”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt, could it? And it might make the muggleborns feel better, knowing they had _something_ they could do for their families right away. Not just muggleborns, come to that.”

“As long as Marauder’s Moon doesn’t start selling a false sense of security, Paddy,” James warned. “And I don’t know how good it’d be, making prices different based on blood status, in either direction.”

Sirius gave him an irritated glance.  “Oh, like everyone doesn’t do it already for purebloods.  Just because no one says so out loud.  I think it’d be quite good, evening up the scales.”

“...Maybe, but if we _did_ say so out loud, that’d look like a precedent, and you know how that could get used.”

Grimacing, Sirius admitted, “Yeah, okay. If we just give the school a load to send to the right homes for free on the quiet, though, you know your peppershaker up there will get all indignant about how if we have to do it we should be making it clear why we have to do it, though, and Moony will make his I’m Not Going To Say Anything Because It’s The Right Thing To Do But Passing Up Those Sales Hurts Me In My Teeny-Tiny Savings Vault And Feeling That I Don’t Have A Real Job face.”

James shrugged.  “So we’ll talk about the best way to offset their costs when it’s all of us. Do we know what muggle bandages look like, then?”

“Just that they’re sort of long brown ovals from the back, but I think we’re probably not going to pester Lily for details until she’s calmed down a bit…”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : Today’s selection of beta-conversation:
> 
> Psyche_girl: The problem with this chapter is that it’s basically an object lesson in why “Allies” who Don’t Actually Listen To The Groups They Fight For are such a big problem. :P (Although, yes, still not as bad as no allies at all). It’s just depressing.
> 
> Potionpen: ...Fistpumping and shouting “ _Win!_ Take that, SPEW!!!!” is prrrrobably not a good reaction to that observation… n.n;;
> 
>  **Image Disclaimer** : This picture was labeled 'for noncommercial re-use' on Google Image. Nothing in it belongs to me. (Although I have a furniture-cover which is arguably worse than that sheet. Shut up, it went with the room it was originally in...)


	17. Ministry of Magic, Portkey Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : Magic does not make the RMV(or, one presumes, the DLVA) better. NOTHING makes the RMV better. The RMV is designed to CORRODE YOUR SOUL with boredom and uncomfy seats and workers who’ve seen worse tantrums than yours over better-filled out paperwork ten times just since lunch, hon. And when the RMV is called ‘The Portkey Office,’ they also expect to be tipped.
> 
> (You can call it a bribe if you want, but when it’s universally understood that everyone’s supposed to do it, it’s a godric-bedamned tip, okay, and your bosses are factoring the probability that you might get one today into your pay packet.)
> 
> Also, Lucius is probably (definitely) up to, like, stuff, and he probably (definitely) thinks he’s being really slick about it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : for discussions of racism, HIV/AIDS, and parricide, taken seriously but with inappropriate resignation/learned helplessness. That place where there are no decent-person choices. THERE ARE NO PERFECT CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY. FOR SERIOUS.
> 
>  **Notes** : Molly-is-short-for Maleficent has been my headcanon since Brillig, and I'm sticking with it because of reasons. The same reasons that say, "Goddamn it, James's parents are Charlus and Dorea, not EUPHEMIA AND FLEAMONT FFS." Namely: wizarding naming conventions cannot follow the rule of 'the author wants you to feel comfortable with this character and think they're a normal and likeable person when you first meet them, which you will feel all the more because of other people's odd names.' It can be the rule of a book, and very effective, but as worldbuilding it is FAIL.
> 
> Muggle-normal names in children with _two_ wildly purebloodedly-muggle-improbably named parents must be A) part of an established and story-established family tradition of either names of that type or no naming-pattern at all, B) nicknames the characters took on themselves because they're more into muggle-related politics on the liberal side than their parents were, or C) the result of a damn good backstory that had damn well better get told.
> 
> I'm with Aristotle and not Holmes on this one. Prefer the (muggle-)impossible, like James's parents having a-bit-too-old-fashioned names due to being, by muggle rules, too old to reproduce unless their names were Abraham and Sarah, to the sociologically improbable that lacks human-quirky causal context.

“But we’re _not_ leaving home,” Evan said reasonably, interrupting himself to wave, “Oh—yes, hullo, Tetchley.  Well, I’d love to, speaking personally, but you’d have to floo the firm; I’m not allowed to make my own appointments anymore—”

Severus rolled his eyes.

“His daughter’s starting at Hogwarts next year,” Evan subvocalized as the man drifted off, without moving his mouth much.  “Some families get sentimental about a kid’s last summer unsorted.”

“…Better than the alternative,” Severus allowed gloomily after a moment’s reflection.

“Quite,” Ev agreed, although he was thinking about Sirius more than Spike.  Or even Regulus.  Spike’s grandfather had been horrible, but Spike hadn’t had to actually live with the man and his opinions.  Reg wouldn’t have looked good in yellow at all, but black was also okay for Hufflepuffs, and the Sprout would have been good for his nerves.  Aunt Walburga wouldn’t have minded it as much as Gryffindor, especially after Sirius had already been a worst-case scenario for her to compare Reg to, and Sirius would have teased Reg but not been mean about it—not the way he and his cronies got about Slytherin—and Bella might just have given up on the poor kid in disgust.  But no, Reg had just _had_ to live up to the Family’s Expectations.  

You’d think the Hat would listen to a kid thinking that and shout ‘Hufflepuff!’ no matter _what_ the kid was asking for.  Then again, Gryffindors didn’t seem to think as hard about the Conflicting Priorities problem as other people did, so Ev supposed one couldn’t expect their hats to, either.  

“As I was saying, we’re _not_ leaving home, we’re— _oh merlin halp_ —why, good morning, Madam Prewett.  Yes, a very ugly morning indeed, such a pity, but I’m sure it’ll clear up.  Oh, I’m so glad you’re satisfied with it—I do think it’s one of my better works, you know, but of course that hat would draw out any artist’s best attentions.  By the bye, have you met my flatmate?  Snape, this is Muriel Prewett.  Madam Prewitt, Severus Snape, of course you’ll have heard old Slughorn go on _and_ on about him—”

“ _Rosierrrr,”_ Severus groaned, burying his eyes in the heels of his hands.

“Snape, you remember Madam Prewitt’s niece Maleficent’s husband, Arthur Weasley?  Head Boy our first year, wasn’t he?”

“I think he _may_ have been a Gryffindor prefect,” the terrible woman allowed, as if she did believe it but only because Dumbledore was unbelievable.  Which, fair enough.

“Of course,” Severus agreed, uncurling warily.  “He used to corner me and Evans and ask highly enthusiastic questions about zips and ring binders and why anyone had ever thought carrier pigeons could do the work of owls.”

Evan’s automatic Polite hiccupped at this, and he couldn’t help pausing inquisitively.

“Well, actually, they can’t,” Severus explained, “but rock doves _are_ a bit like salmon in that they have a natural ability, which can be enhanced through selective breeding, to be able to,” he glared at Evan, “return to that one place that we as humans call _a home,_ to wit, the comfort and safety of their own nest where dwelleth that one pair-bonded mate under whose wing they belong.  So they can’t be sent with a message to anyone anywhere, but they can be taken away from home and let loose to fly back with a message for the human handlers whose House hosts that nest.”

“Birdbrain,” Evan said with affable fondness, because the lady was looking at Spike as if he was crazy, and today Spike was wearing a greyish shirt that was more blue than green and a waistcoat that was on the brown side of taupe, so Evan could very easily excuse the fact that he was, in fact, yes, crazy.

“Oh, as if you haven’t spent hours painting pigeon necks,” Spike scoffed irritably.

“Not just pigeon necks, Snape, I paint the whole bird, you know, and, after all, they are awfully shiny—oh, must you be going?  Well, give my best to the family— _thank you, thank you, thank you…”_

“I’m sure you could get rid of them yourself if you only tried,” Spike noted, amused.

“Yes, but if _I_ try I get scolded,” Evan said cheerfully.  “Your reputation as a surly, untamable reprobate is more precious than gems, Spike, I hope you realize that.”

“Gracious,” Spike replied blandly.  “Such a birdbrain as I could never have comprehended any such thing, I’m sure.  Certainly not by the age of, oh, I don’t know, sixteen at the latest, as I recall.”

Evan laughed, and leaned into him sideways so their shoulders pressed together for a moment.  “Now, listen, Spike, we’re not leaving home, honestly, because—”  

“ _For pity’s sake,_ ” Severus snarled, loudly enough that poor Mr. Crumbworthy, sizzling in alarm on the other end of his glare, retracted his wave hastily and backed away.  Turning the glare on Evan, he said in exasperation, “Stop _saying_ that, it’s obviously cursed.”

“Well, we’re not,” Evan said mildly.  “I mean to say, we’re both going, aren’t we?”

“…Oh, _Ev,_ ” Spike sighed, and leaned tiredly back into him.  “For god’s sake, you’re not taking this personally, are you?  I swear, if you’ve let Lily give you a complex, I will _invite her over to tea so as to explain matters to her all afternoon._ ”

“That won’t be necessary,” Evan reassured him hastily, trying not to make a face.

“Thought not,” Spike smirked.

“I’m not taking it personally,” he reiterated.  “Only, you really worried me, Spike.”  He took advantage of the cover of their summer cloaks to find Spike’s hand next to him and squeeze onto it.  Severus always wore cloaks that looked autumn-appropriate no matter what weather charms were spelled into them.  It was one of those things that got him looked at when he didn’t necessarily want to be, but Evan appreciated it.  In summer Evan’s own outerwear was too short to hide what hands were doing, and in colder weather two pairs of winter-weight cloaks would have been more difficult to navigate around.  Besides, when Spike looked underdressed for the weather, Evan had an excuse to wrap an arm around him, although Spike wasn’t providing this excuse on purpose for the purpose, as far as Ev could tell.

He also clearly hadn’t meant to worry Evan on purpose.  Not that he usually did make people worry about him (as opposed to about what he might do) on purpose, but how very worrying it had been was worrisome all on its own, if he hadn’t meant to at all.  He’d really thought Severus was about to go catatonic again, for a minute there.  Over _luggage_.

“Just because I don’t _like_ it doesn’t mean you have to _worry,_ ” Severus muttered.

“I don’t have to, I _get_ to,” Evan told him, injecting just a touch of nearly-sharp annoyance into his voice, Narcissa style, so that Severus would stop sullenly avoiding his eyes and see they were warm.  He could have done without the flinch, but he did get a Spike who was looking at him again. Making sure to warm his face to extra-embarrassing even though they were in public, he squeezed his friend’s hand harder and explained, in the Tone of Using Small Words, “You’re my Spike.”

Severus made an _araagh_ noise.  His expression under his heightened color was, however, slightly pleased as well as deeply embarrassed, so that was all right.  

“But what I don’t understand is,” Evan went on, “since I do, honestly, know not to take it personally… well, why?”

Severus eyebrowed at him.

“Well,” he elaborated, making a mental note to tell Spike later that using that expression on small children who didn’t understand things that he, Severus, considered perfectly obvious had never actually been much help to the kids he’d tutored in the past. It would probably not get him much better results just because he was older now. “Evans said she thought you were upset because you were leaving a place you’d liked living to go back somewhere, er, difficult.  But you _know_ it won’t be like before.  And we can put all our furniture in your rooms, and I thought you were satisfied about the agreement you and Dumbledore came to.  You seemed perfectly happy about it until we actually started packing.”

“The arrangement’s fine,” Severus said irritably.  “I think it’ll be a damned nuisance, as a matter of fact, but it’s better than not seeing each other or advertising to the whole world that putting pressure on one of us would be effective with the other, with things so unstable and precarious as they are. If you see any way out other than through, I don’t.”

“No, and to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not even sure what ‘out’ would look like, Spike,” Ev admitted.

“Nor I,” Severus agreed gloomily.  “We’ve enough languages between us to manage some literal out, but Lord only knows how far certain people’s pique would stretch.”

“Ha,” Evan agreed.  “If even he does, yes.  On which subject, moving to take this job makes you more _occupied_.  I thought you wanted that.”

“I do!” Severus insisted.  “I just… I don’t think you’d understand.”  

“Nonsense,” Evan scoffed with a cheerful face, squeezing his hand again sympathetically.  “You just think you’re being silly for having feelings you don’t think are rational or useful, so you don’t want me to understand and agree you’re silly.”

Then he let Titus Andrews-Novak say hello to him and even stood up and let himself get drawn into a brief chat about the stranglehold the goblins were trying to get on the French ochre market.  This was of particular concern to Titus, who fanatically maintained that Provence was the only place for pink ochre, in the same way that most British wizards insisted Ollivander’s was the only shop for wands.  Evan personally preferred Neapolitan ochre.  While admittedly it wasn’t as beautiful, as an unaltered pigment, as the hot Roussillon color Titus admired, that color wasn’t found very often in nature or anywhere, and had to be blended more often and more intensely.

Evan also felt it unwise to be hasty about making the Goblins feel overly stifled.  Titus was blind to this concern, because _he’d_ never had Spike reading his History notes out loud to him and therefore had, like most people, barely scraped an A on his OWL and dropped the subject hastily the moment the school would let him.

Even wanting to be cautious about them, though, Evan also strongly felt that if they wanted to participate in business and trade, they should be prepared to get stymied and blocked just like everyone else without taking it personally.  Even if some families could get away with monopolies, they were still resented for it, and anyone trying to develop a new one would find themselves kicked rather thoroughly, as Spike might have put it, in the teeth or lower down.  If the goblins didn’t understand that getting that treatment only meant they were being treated normally… well, someone ought to explain it to them, but sadly they probably wouldn’t be inclined to listen, given the way they felt about wizards.

And if they absolutely _had_ to take it personally, they might want to consider that wizards actually had some right to be nervous, and there were perfectly good reasons for it that had nothing to do with disliking goblins as a race.  When a population who’d been really extraordinarily problematic for wizards in the past when it came to weaponry made out of rocks and metals, who showed that they still really did have a grudge against wizards every time a wizard came into their bank, started to get excited about a type of earth that was really quite common… well, couldn’t it just be good history and good political sense to point out that goblins had made good use of loopholes in treaties before?  Did it have to be racial?  

Maybe it did, when the population in question was a race.  But how could that be avoided, when that race presented a united front and acted politically as a body and wouldn’t let anyone get to know any of its members as individuals, except as employers and just maybe co-workers?   Severus would have made a sour phoenix-or-its-ashes comment about that sort of question, and all right, acknowledging wizards’ part in building the tension would have been a smart move on the Ministry’s part, except that they were so terrified of demands for concessions.  But philosophy about circular causality, well, how _useful_ was it, really, when one was trying to deal with the fallout from the situation practically?

Evan didn’t know, and was desperately glad no one expected him to make policy or liase with hostile businessmen or whatnot.   Titus gave one the impression of thinking he wanted to do that sort of thing, but he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a pub with _Reggie._ And Reggie was the very definition of harmless, until he was told not to be by someone he felt he ought to listen to (whether or not he thought he should).

He might have introduced Severus to Titus anyway, because Titus was wildly jealous of Evan’s brush cleaner and might have been able to help him convince Severus it was worth taking to the Ludicrous Patent Office   and putting on the market.  The point of talking to him at all was that Severus had clearly needed a minute to compose himself after having it hammered in to him that someone Really Knew Him, though, so it would have to wait.

Waiting was all he’d need, though; Being Seen always upset Severus, but he didn’t mind being seen _by Evan_ once he’d got over being rocked.  Ev wasn’t sure if he’d show as much appreciation as usual later, since Ev had had the questionable discretion to do it to him in public, but as long as Evan didn’t call attention to the matter and gave His Jumpiness time to settle himself, he thought it should be all right, at least.

When enough of Severus’s nose had re-appeared from behind his hair that Ev thought he was probably feeling halfway human again (as opposed to 100% pure raw, unsheathed nerve bundle), Evan decided, with some relief, that he could wrap the conversation up.  Having more or less lost track of what Titus was arguing passionately at him about by then, he allowed that the man could possibly be right, but it wasn’t really a matter that could be decisively decided between two painters, was it?

(He caught a soft snorting noise from under Spike’s hair, and smiled to himself.  If Spike was scoffing at the abuse of the language, he was probably feeling better.)

Titus proved stubborn, though, which ‘forced’ Evan to finally give in and get rude.  “Is it ochre mining that's brought you to the good old Portkey Office today, then?” he asked jovially.  “Planning to get in and do some digging yourself while the coast is clear, eh?”

“The idea!”  Titus shiftily scoffed.  “I am going to France, yes, but it's only to visit my uncle. He's poorly, you know. What nasty minds you Slytherin families have.”

“There's no need either to blame any nasty-mindedness, had there been any, on—”Severus began sharply, his hair sliding back as he raised his head so that his nose looked like a blade sliding out of a black oiled-silk sheath. It was entirely possible, Evan noted fondly, that he'd meant it to.

“I don't believe we've been introduced?”  Titus insinuated haughtily, looking at Spike’s beloved, custom-tailored, extremely eccentric cuffs and the stolen school Quidditch boots he tended to wear when he was feeling rattled.

“No, but I've mentioned my flatmate, Severus Snape,” Evan agreed chattily.

Titus’s face went a funny color. “Snape?”  he repeated faintly.   Titus was older than they were, but Hogwarts alumni comprised a rather small town. Severus might not have been a big fish, but he’d cast a long shadow.

Spike based his crooked teeth in what he would have protested was a polite smile, but in practice made him look like a homicidal horse.  One of the winged, sawtoothed French ones that would not only kick right through its stall to get at your head, but also bribe the rats to paint your bandages with raw sewage.

“Yes, he's the one who makes that brush-cleaner of mine you like so much,” Evan nodded as if happily oblivious. “I did tell you, Snape, that it would be popular if you'd only bother--”

“Had there been any,” Severus pressed on, evidently in one of his bloody-minded moods, “on either Rosier’s family or his House.”

Titus didn't stop looking cheese-colored, but he did pause to be startled. Evan tried not to look annoyed, since Spike didn't need to feel he'd done something wrong on top of everything else that was bothering him. Ev would have preferred, however, to let Titus go on peacefully  assuming that he was another, younger Hufflepuff.

“Or his family's house,” Severus went on as smoothly as if his eyes hadn't cut to Evan's face and momentarily faltered.  “Whatever any of those might be, or what he had for breakfast, or the composition of the Great Wall of China, for that matter.  Firstly, because painting a individual as wholly a product of his background rather than a person in his own right is what has torn our school and our country apart for the last fifty years at the least, and left us instead with a cauldron of warring tribes, half of which are so drowned and drunk with groupthink that they might as well wear their House badges instead of faces. You _are_ Hufflepuff, I take it? Yes, I thought so. And secondly--”

“Oh, dear,” Titus said desperately, all his worst fears about Talking To The Dreaded Snape clearly confirmed.  “I think they might be calling my number, I had better--”

“ _And secondly_ ,” Spike glinted on with a poisonous snarl, “your avarice was so blindingly obvious that no nasty-mindedness was necessary. You might as well have gone about with ‘I shall get mine before my bankers get theirs, because they're too feeble to notice me doing it and certainly wouldn't think to punish me for it in my interest rate’ stamped on your forehead.”

“He can get a bit cranky in waiting rooms,” Evan didn't-really-apologize, slinging an affable hand around Spike’s bristling shoulders. “I'm sure you'll get on splendidly really. _Was_ that your number, though, Ty?”

Titus agreed that he was sure it had been, and hustled away to the far end of the room, nowhere near the counter—to tell his friends how everything the Gryffindors had ever said about Spike was true, judging from their furtive, wide-eyed looks.

Evan sighed, just a little.

“What happened to ‘more precious than gems’?” Spike asked sardonically.

“Nothing, but if you throw a gem to an augury, it’ll just blunt its beak trying to eat the shiny beetle,” Evan told him.

Spike’s eyes glinted, inappropriately happily, and his quoting voice matched as he recited, “Age before beauty… and pearls before swine.”

Evan blinked.  “What?”

In a grander and more sarcastic quoting voice, Spike replied, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Ev peered at the gaggle of presumably-Hufflepuffs, who were whispering ferociously and still eying Spike.  “Yes, that’s about the size of it,” he agreed resignedly.  “Is that someone clever we should be reading together?”

Spike paused and, to Evan’s fascination, twitched.  Finally, he said, “I’m not taking a crack at that one with a fifty-foot Beater’s bat. _Don’t_ ask Narcissa.   Or Evans.   _Really_ don’t ask Evans.”

“All right,” he temporarily-acceded, puzzled.  “Er… why not?”

“Because she’d know.  And she’d laugh at me.  And she might just think it was so funny she had to tell my parents.  And then me da would remember to care about something he doesn’t actually care about at all, and decide he’s horrified about you, me, and our entire world all over again just because he’d think it’s expected of him.”

“…Right,” Evan folded, but dubiously.  “Well, if you’re not going to explain _that…_ ” he trailed off pointedly.  Spike pulled a blank, incurious face on over his little squirm.  “I really think I ought to understand,” he referred back to what would have been an insulting put-off if he’d believed it.  “And I’m sure I will once you’ve explained.”

He kept on looking open-eared and immovable until Spike sighed, and hunched into vulture-shoulders.  Evan put a hand to his wand in its holster (no one ever noticed his wand-sheath was open-bottomed, although he had to agree with Spike’s glum assessment that if _he_ tried to get away with a holster that would let him cast without drawing, everyone would notice instantly) and cast a quick eyes-away.  In the wake of the tingle of the magic, he rubbed the stressed furrow between Spike’s eyes with two gentle fingers, and stroked down the long line of his face.

Severus met his eyes, waded with a gently lost look in something only he could see for a moment, and then glanced away and sighed again.  He muttered, “Ours is the only place no one’s ever attacked me in.”

Evan froze.

Possibly taking it for incomprehension, Severus muttered on, “I mean, it isn’t just bedrooms, actually my actual room at ho—at Spinner’s End was the safest place in the house; it was where I was out of the way.  Out of sight, out of mind, you know.  But for years there wasn’t anyplace there that… I mean, there wasn’t a _lock,_ and absolutely everywhere at Hogwarts, if it wasn’t that lot it was Mulciber and Avery thinking something was funny or I’d annoyed them, and even at St. Mungo’s Potter _would_ keep bothering me, and when I was staying with Lucius that summer I never got to wake up on my own until I learned to sleep very badly; it was always either the elves bouncing in to be alarm clocks or the dueling instructor surprising me awake in oh-so-enjoyable ways to improve my reflexes.”

Evan was so shaken and at a loss that he was probably grinding Severus’s fingers together far too hard and he didn’t manage to stop himself from blankly saying, “Duels are formal.”

Spike shrugged uncomfortably.  “Yes, well.  I told him how things were.  I didn’t say I didn’t want him to do it, it’s just that our flat has really been the only place.”

“Spike,” Evan said helplessly.  He didn’t see how they could call any of it off, not now.  You didn’t break promises you’d made to both the Dark Lord and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.  He could see, behind his eyes, a little fuzzy animal that was his mind, running in circles in a sealed room, looking for an out.  Which was frightfully unhelpful, because while he was looking at it he wasn’t actually thinking.

“Needs must,” Spike said gruffly, with an abrupt shrug.  “It doesn’t take _that_ before there’s no way out.”  He nudged Evan’s foot, the one the Dark Lord had put his Mark on because Evan’s arm had already been inked with the comforting reminder of who he’d become for Severus.  “As soon as one’s been brought to the attention of people like that, it’s ‘are you mine or my enemy.’  Backing out would just invite example-making, even if one could.  Think of that strange cat-god.”

It took Evan a moment to translate this last into ‘Bast Lestrange.’  Still helplessly, he re-offered, “We can put all our furniture in your rooms.”

“Possibly,” Spike theoretically-agreed, in the tone that meant he wasn’t at all sure how he he felt about that idea and the uncertainty was making him uncomfortable with himself.

“I’ll paint the ceiling?”

This got him one of those warmly wry looks, and a threatened, “Yes, you will.”  With another resigned shrug, though, Spike went on, “It still won’t be…”

After a moment, Evan tried, “Untouched?”  But at the same time, Severus finished, “Hallowed.”

Evan looked at their ticket, and then he looked at the counter.  Good.  “Come with me,” he said decisively.

“They said we’d have to take another queue-ticket if we left,” Severus objected.  

“Oh, Spike,” Evan sighed at him affectionately.  “You’re so _scrupulous._ ”

Thirty-seconds’ chat with the bored-stupid Ministry guard at the door and a discreet passing-over of a few sickles saw them leaving the waiting room and its anti-apparition wards.  With their original tickets.

“I think I object to this,” Spike disapproved.

“You don’t very much,” Evan told him.  “It’s the sort of bribe very nearly anyone can afford.”

“…Meaning it’s expected if not actually baked into the system.  Now I _know_ I object to this.    There isn’t a WC in the waiting area.  Or a tea station, although I suppose a tea station would disimprove the bladder situation.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Evan promised, and Spike hummed dubiously.  Smiling, Ev clapped once, and called, “Linkin, take us to my room, please, and then you may go right back to what you were doing.”

“What?” Spike choked, alarmed, as the twiggy little fingers grasped their wrists.

Linkin took Evan at his word, and so when they reappeared and Spike wheeled around, he was already gone.  Evan thanked him anyway: he didn’t need to be there to hear a Rosier calling him even if it was just for a thank-you, once his attention had already been alerted.

Then he lolled onto his old bed, the same one he’d had as a child.  Lucius and Narcissa hadn’t decided yet whether Draco would get a bed that would grow with him.  Luke said having the same bed your whole life was comforting, and made it even more true that Hogwarts was an exciting adventure and home was _home_ ,  Narcissa said she expected to want to redecorate her baby’s room a few times as he got older, and had no reason to think the same bed would always suit.

Evan, who personally thought it was asking for trouble to unnecessarily make long-term decisions about a child who was so very likely to be spoiled silly without taking its opinions into account, if anyone had asked him, stretched luxuriously out over the bed on which his opinion had also never been asked.  Confidentially, he said,  “I wasn’t here much once school started, you know—hols were either with Narcissa and Reggie’s families or out wherever Mum and Dad wanted me to bounce about the museums and landscape-worthy scenes on any given summer.  And before that I didn’t think about it, but it’s pretty awful, isn’t it?”

Severus looked around slowly.  Linkin had kept the place pristine, of course; there wasn’t even any dust in the air.  The fine, diaphanous summer curtains and sheets were snow-white, and the fat, roly-poly rosewood of the furniture stood out ruddy and cheerfully dignified against the walls, which were the pale, pure blue of a cold winter morning.  As slowly as he’d turned, Severus said, “It looks like a hotel.”

Evan frowned thoughtfully.  “Well, you know how it is, one can’t ever stand one’s old work, and all my recent things are bought or at the firm, or they’re ours and I’ve packed them.”  

On second thought, he wasn’t sure if that was actually true for Spike.  If a potion worked, it worked.  It wasn’t the sort of thing where one winced over one’s old brushwork and wanted to correct all the composition.  

Then again, Spike had been known to correct published recipes by other people that did work, and to good effect.  Improving his own early efforts wasn’t a stretch at all.

Spike was looking at him funny.  He considered more.  “I think I had a stuffed goat,” he offered, and got up to check in the closet.  “Yes, here it is.”  

“…That could almost be an actual goat,” Severus said.  He was still using that slow voice.

“It’s more cartoonish, a bit,” Evan pointed out.  “And even compared to the little ones, it’s smaller.”

“Quite realistic, though.  You seem to have chewed on it.  Evan?  Why did you have a stuffed goat, when you were young enough to chew on your toys, that wasn’t especially cuddly?”

“Oh,” Evan explained, relieved to have an answer, because that particular slow voice never boded well.  “It was because we always keep a few goats, for dairy and groundskeeping.  They’re charmed not to eat the roses, you know, so it’s quite safe to let them wander where they like.  Grandpère wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be afraid of them.  You’re still looking at me funny, Spike.”

“The question of ‘why did you have the particular soft toy that you had as a baby’ isn’t normally expected to have an answer with actual logic behind it, Ev.”

Evan blinked.

In a perfectly collected voice, Severus said, “I’m going to show each of your parents all of their bones, one by one.”

Dubious in his turn, Evan asked, “Aren’t you the one who said they meant well?”

“That’s not what I said, and irregardless I am not currently interested in the difference between criminal incompetence and criminal negligence.  I am understanding correctly, am I, that this is what your room’s always looked like?  Linkin didn’t empty it out and make it look like a hotel when we moved into the flat together?”

“What I brought you here for,” Evan began firmly.

“There is no possible way you can end that sentence grammatically,” Spike observed, probably going along with his attempt to change the subject.  It was always a mistake to try and lighten a mood while mired in a killing rage, Evan had observed—mostly from watching Spike try it.

“I brought you here to fix it,” Evan bypassed his touchingly lame effort.

“…Interior decorator is not a job in my skill set,” Spike informed him, eyebrows up.

Putting the goat back away and drawing him down into the bed, which was too small for two even if one of the two was as skinny as Spike, Evan informed him back, “O Best Beloved, this is not news.”

After a while, possibly as a result of having his eyes too close to them, Severus pushed out, “Your sheets should be blue.  Darkest.”

“Mmmnavy?” Evan asked his spine, following the question with his teeth.

“No, the other one.”  Perhaps feeling this was too vague, or else because Evan had moved back to kissing and he’d therefore recovered the use of a few neurons, Severus amended, “As in an Everlasting Elixer.”

“…Er… Spike?”

“ _Before_ you add the powdered chestnuts,” Spike elaborated crossly.

“That’s teal,” Evan told him, chuckling into his skin.  “It’s practically hunter-green.”

“No, teals’ eyes-feathers are lighter than that.”

“Well, I know what you mean,” Evan laughed, nosing his hip, and tapped the sheets with his wand. What Spike actually meant was a sort of swamp-at-night color, only more pure.  Just for fun, he gave it a bit of a shimmer, and an underlying dark-and-light pattern as if sunlight were straining to get at it through leaves.

Spike hummed approval, and flipped them, his hooded eyes lingering on Evan’s.  Ev tried not to bat them.  “How much time would you say we’ve got?” he asked, drawing back enough to dig the pads of his genius fingers into Evan’s soles.  As always when he did this, Evan had the brief flutter of a queasy thought about how connected that tasteless, boring, black tattoo made him to He Whose Business This Wasn’t, but the warm roll-in to the deep pressure drove it quickly from his mind.   “Before they go past our number?”

“Not so _very_ much,” Evan estimated with unfathomable regret.

Severus made a _well, then_ sort of philosophical noise.  He folded Evan’s hand more tightly around his wand, rumbled, “Paint,” into his ear, and lowered his mouth.

Evan would, under other circumstances, have been extremely dissatisfied with the blotch-and-lines abstract he jerked and flailed into existence under the gloriously unhelpful guidance of his Spike’s ruthless attentions.  On the other hand, this was _definitely_ their bedroom and not his nursery now, which had been the entire point.  And it undebatably did not look like a hotel room.

Ev didn’t know _what_ it looked like, except ‘liable to give Linkin conniptions,’ between his ‘painting’ and the long strips Spike had (rather vengefully) torn out of the curtains, but ‘a hotel room’ was not it.

He had to deal with Spike glowering cheatedly at him when Linkin took them back (in order to avoid elf-fits, they stepped out into the hallway before Ev called him) to find there were still a stupid number of tickets in the queue to be addressed before theirs, but he was far too buzzy and happy to care. He, too, would have liked to spend more time forced skin-tight together in the little bed, Spike’s neck flushed-hot and welcoming-soft against his face as their hearts slowed, but there was a bigger picture.

His old room at Rosier Hall was a new one for Spike, and he’d be a fool to think Spike would unconsciously rely on it for safety as he had their flat.  Not yet.  But there was no reason to think it would ever be a place Spike would get harried and horribly startled in by anything outside his own skin, either.

Dumbledore wasn’t giving Spike a safe place—he couldn’t; Spike would never be able to completely relax in Hogwarts even if none of the kids ever bothered him in his rooms.  But Ev could give him one that he could know _right now_ was theirs-only, and at least know right now it _could_ become safety to him in time.

Of course, Ev’s parents did sometimes come home, and on rare occasions they were even home when it wasn’t a holiday-ish sort of thing.  Which was why he hadn’t taken Spike into the master bedroom.  But really it wasn’t often, and surely not- _quite_ -perfect was better than a bleak and harried future of no respite at all from adolescents?

But brewers were not fundamentally big-picture people.  Spike was better at it than most, but he was as liable as the rest of the birdbrains in his lab to getting hung up on details, when he wasn’t remembering not to.  So Evan got glowered at.  

He hadn’t actually told Spike out loud what he had in mind, anyway; it was entirely possible that Spike (who liked to pretend he never seriously needed anything) thought he’d just been _distracted_.  Ah, well, nothing to be done.  Actually telling Spike would have been a bad idea; would have gotten his back up on the subject.  Much better to let Severus sink into occupation slowly, as they had with the flat, even if Ev would have preferred him to feel better about everything right now.  It would feel more real to him that way.

The glower intensified when Spike realized that this time they weren’t going to be able to get one of the benches against the wall.  Evan shrugged at him, and steered them towards the back of a dark, neat head of hair that he thought he recognized.  They might as well try to get some use out of the morning.

It was indeed the head of the DMLE, also known to those in the know (although not, one could assert with 99% certainty, to himself) as the father of Bella’s new catspaw.  It also appeared to be his secretary, who drove Evan absolutely _up the wall._

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the man.  It was that Weatherby had a rather interesting chin and hair that was extremely boring until he went into natural light (seldom) and a downcast-eyed, deferential way of speaking that made Evan sure he knew _absolutely all of the things ever_ (Spike, when he’d complained about this, had gone all quirky-faced and asked if he knew the word ‘projection).  And he’d very humbly shunted away an offer to be painted—or, rather, he’d shunted away an offer to be painted by Evan in favor of being painted by an older but, modesty aside, less inspired and honestly less competent Rose  & Yew portraitist.

And Dashiel, who was a third cousin and did know what Father and Grandpère expected of him,  hadn’t even been able to get the man to engage in _small talk,_ let alone to talk about anything interesting.  The wretched wizard had, according to Dashiel, just followed directions with a vaguely distant expression the whole time and, when pressed a little, apologized for being dull by saying he felt it his duty to use his time away from his paperwork to organize his mental file cabinets.

Evan wanted to pry into his head with a crowbar and a nutcracker, never mind his wand.  On the other hand, the feeling cheered him up, because he thought it helped him know, just a little bit, what it felt like to be Spike all the time.

Neither he nor his employer were providing Evan with any crowbars at the moment, although possibly he was getting some nuts to crack.   The two of them were going over a long list of names, but it seemed to be just Crouch telling Weatherby what to write down.  Evan wasn’t getting any context.  It was a list of Ministry workers, he knew that—mostly people from the Department of Accidental Magic and Catastrophes, Muggle Relations, and Auror trainees, but also a few of the lower-level people from the Office of Misinformation.  Weatherby was occasionally suggesting a name, and sometimes Crouch said, “A good thought, but so-and-so won’t wish to spare them” and sometimes, “On balance, I think not,” and sometimes, “Indeed.”

Spike looked utterly bored and impatient with being in the waiting room and was shifting restlessly and had taken out his notebook.  He appeared to be writing out a list of ingredients, in Futhark. Evan noticed, however, after watching him with half an eye for a few moments, that Spike had written down Gamboge, Galengal, Mistletoe, Jasmine, Devil’s Bit, and _Nothaphoebe umbelliflora_ in the same order and at the same time that Crouch had said, “Gammage, Galworthy, Misanthwerpe, Jaspar, Deviner, Nott.”

Unfortunately, tackling him down into the bench and snogging him soundly in public just was not on.  Rats.

Crouch finally wound up his list, and said irritably, “I can’t imagine why the Portkey Office is permitted to behave in this dilatory manner.  We must have been here twenty minutes.”

Evan and Spike rolled their eyes at each other.  By Ev’s estimation, they’d been _gone_ forty-five minutes, and they probably still had another half hour to wait.

“I’m sure we all wish to be certain that everyone’s paperwork is correctly processed, sir,” Weatherby murmured.  “As I recall, you said only last month, after that small difficulty with Minister Bagnold’s entourage—”

“Yes, yes, of course, but this is holding up the business of government,” Crouch said testily.  “They can’t imagine that ministers at my level—”

Severus coughed a cough that sounded remarkably like, “ _Polyjuice.”_

There was a turning-around sound, and Evan could see in the spectacles of the knitting wizard opposite them that Crouch had turned around to face them.  In an affronted voice, Barty’s father demanded, “I beg your pardon, young man, were you addressing me?”

Severus ignored this until Crouch cleared his throat with rising indignation.  Then he turned around with a very cool face and very high eyebrows, and inquired incredulously, “I beg your pardon, Director Crouch, but were _you_ addressing _me_?”

“Perhaps not,” the older wizard said, narrow-eyed and not precisely mollified.

“Do convey our regards to Bartemius,” Severus said, with a gesture that included Evan.  “Regulus informs us his NEWTs were spectacular and he’s doing very well in his training.”  He nodded civilly and turned away.  As he turned, though, his face twitched as though he were going to sneeze and then he did, indeed, ‘sneeze,’ “ _Controlling spells!”_  Perfectly poker-faced, he sighed, “Rosier, have you a spare handkerchief?”

Rather less than perfectly poker-faced and without looking around,  Evan said, “You don’t deserve one.”

Perhaps Weatherby disagreed, because he wordlessly passed one over. It was dove-grey and very plain, of quite good linen.  Severus looked at it, paid particular attention to one place on the lining that looked like every other place on the lining, and then actually twisted around in his seat to give Weatherby a bright-eyed You Are The Sort Of Person I Can Deal With look.  

Evan should not have been surprised.  Actually, he wasn’t.  The lack of surprise didn’t stop him wanting to bury his face in Spike’s neck and whine.   _He_ hadn’t been able to get Weatherby to give him more than the time of day, and no one had previously had any reason whatever to think the man was amused by rudeness or responded well to over-bluntness.  It wasn’t _fair_.

Crouch was looking at Spike as though what he was thinking was that crazy and impertinent children should not, in a sensible universe, make good points through sneezing.  He seemed to be about to say something, possibly at least encompassing the ‘crazy and impertinent’ part of that, when a portly little ex-neighbor bustled up to their bench.

“Crouch!  So glad I caught you before you left, your office said you might still be here.”

“I am,” Crouch said icily and rather loudly, “as the Portkey office appears to feel that a top-level Ministerial meeting with the head of the Rigspolitiet Magiske in Denmark to follow up on the Giant situation in the Faroe Islands is of equal urgency with housewitches wishing to take the sea air on holiday!”

There was an awkward pause, as one of those silences that sometimes fall in a crowded room fell.

“Oh, well, you know how it is,” Fudge mumbled into it,  “They wouldn’t work here if they could get a job training security trolls, eh?”  

A nearly tangible wave of frost rolled over them from the counter.  It wasn’t _actually_ tangible, as it would have been if Spike had been the one to be slapped with a pas as faux as that.  Evan could still feel an hour being added to Crouch’s wait time, though, and two hours being added to Fudge’s every time he came in for at least the next year.  Or until he figured out how to apologize _really effectively._

In hopes of preventing it from affecting him and Spike, because he _knew_ Fudge was going to cast about for help and notice him in a moment, Evan turned with an expression of really wide-eyed and obvious I Cannot Believe You Just Said That What Is Wrong With You Today—so obvious that it would be visible from the counter, he prayed.  Severus, failing to take Fudge’s invariable habit of never trying to handle anything on his own into account, had done his absolute best to vanish behind his shoulders, hair, and notebook.   You could actually only see an acute triangle of forehead and his horrified fingers clutching the cover of the book.  Evan wanted to snug him and duck under his hair and kiss his poor appalled face, but of course that was right out.

Typically, it was barely half a second before Fudge worked out he’d done something gauche and his eyes darted around.  Blithely (or desperately, it was hard to tell with Hufflepuffs sometimes, not because they were good at covering but because a significant portion of the ones who went into the Ministry had public faces that were _always_ trying too hard) ignoring that Evan didn’t look any more impressed with him than anyone else did at the moment, he jovially called, “Rosier, hullo!  And that’s never Snape under there, is it?”

“NO,” Severus snapped emphatically.

“Hullo, Severus!”

 _“Auuurgh._ ”

“Haha, he’ll never change, will he, Evan?”

“Not till the reed blossoms, Neil,” Evan smiled, sighing to himself under the sleepy expression even though Severus, fingers twitching towards his pale and knobbly wand, had rewarded him with a very rare double take. Fudge didn’t look to be in one of his moods where you could subtly remind him he had ‘important’ things to do and he’d bustle right off.  

“Barty, have you met my neighbors?  Ha!  Well, my former neighbors now, I suppose!”

Severus attempted to merge into the pages of his notebook, face-first, while Crouch and Evan resignedly went through the tedious process of explaining through Fudge’s I-says that Evan and Severus had been a year or two ahead of Barty Jr at school, and that Ev’s cousin Regulus Black (Ev could hear Severus roll his eyes at Crouch’s name-dropping from behind the book—which was exactly why, once properly introduced, the same people who were only willing to be introduced to either of them for Narcissa’s sake in the first place were quite often less snippy about Spike’s parents than Lucius’s peacocks) was great friends with said Barty Jr.

Fudge made a noise he probably thought was sage-sounding, and probably only didn’t get his hand bitten off at the wrist when he patted Severus jovially on the shoulder because Severus felt proprietary about the man’s wretched child’s Gobstones skills.   “Well, I won’t keep you lads,” he said, still jovially.

Severus’s eyes slid up from over the pages, although his nose didn’t emerge.  He didn’t actually _say_ ‘This is the Portkey Office, we will be stuck here until Doomsday, especially since the wizard working the counter who visibly took your comment personally has seen you being friendly to us,’ but he also didn’t blink. Weatherby turned away, smoothly but swiftly, and coughed.

Having completely missed this, Fudge was pressing on, “It was Barty here I wanted a word with.”

“Oh,” Crouch replied, flat as Spike’s eyes and twice as gloomy, “you had something of _importance_ to discuss, Fudge?”

“Well, yes!” Fudge blinked.  “Said I was looking for you, didn’t I?”

“Not in those _precise_ words,” Spike answered, but it was so far under his breath Ev didn’t think anyone could hear him: purely knee-jerk pedantry, which Spike might have resisted better if Fudge hadn’t been annoying him.  Ev slid him an indignant look and traced S-T-O-P-P-I-T / I-N / **P-U-B-L-I-C** on his own leg.   He received first a confused look, and then an amused one and the reply G-L-U-T-T-O-N.  He widened his eyes, gave the tiniest, most emphatic nod he could, and got to see all the stress around Spike’s eyes warm away.

"It's about this new department you want to steal all my lads for, " Fudge went on indignantly.

"I hardly think that a fair description, Mr. Fudge," Crouch replied-testily. Evan was starting to think it was his default tone.

"Well, however you care to describe it, I should like to know what you mean by it!"

Crouch looked like an elephant with a small toothless crup latched onto its tail. “I mean, Fudge, that, you must have noticed the recent rise in petty, muggle-related crimes."

Evan's brain took a possibly irrelevant microsecond to notice that now he sounded exactly like Spike would have, if Spike had badly wanted to say ‘even you’ and was absurdly proud of how terribly diplomatic he was only just managing to be.

Then his brain took a brief pause—from the much more pleasant occupation of wallowing in considerations of the least suave Slytherin since Merlin thought swanning off to wherever on earth the ‘Forest Sauvage’ really was with the firstborn Crown Prince of really a not terribly pleasant or temperate High King was a bright idea[1]—to realize what the unpleasant and overly-groomed man had actually said.  He glanced over at Severus, silently asking whether he was the only one who didn't know what this was about.

Severus’s expression suggested that Evan was not, exactly, but that Severus might have heard something that hadn't seemed important at the time and was making more striking sense now. The slight wince under this expression, which otherwise was one of slow consideration, suggested he'd heard it from Lucy Wilkes.  (It was a very _distinctive_ pained wince.  He had a completely different one that usually meant Lockhart, too.  Actually, a lot of people shared that one.  This would have been funnier if Lockhart had been oblivious to it. Although since he thought it wasn’t so much a wince as a jolt of being overcome by his stunning good looks yet again despite years of exposure, Ev still felt it was it pretty funny.)

Ev had wondered if they were still on speaking terms after Spike had told her in no uncertain terms that he had a right to dictate something about the way she was handling her boyfriend/assignment, despite not even knowing who said boyfriend was.    He hadn't asked Lucy because when he tried to talk about Spike with her, she went over all sparkly and asked about things Spike did not want her to know and talked about things Spike did not want her to look at, or, indeed, think about. And he hadn't asked Spike because thinking about her tended to make Spike look headachy.

He asked now, just with an eyebrow.  Spike sighed, silently, and replied, M-U-L-C-I-B-E-R.

Evan sat back in disgust.  He didn’t doubt it for a second.  Playing silly, little nasty jokes that upset the muggleborns had been Mulciber’s favorite thing to do at school—and, therefore, sort-of-Avery’s too, by default, although Avery really had simpler tastes and wouldn’t have thought it was much fun on on his own.  Of _course_ Mulciber had graduated to nastier tricks against muddier blood.  And, knowing him, he’d probably found himself more friends to help.  

Reptilian ladder snakes weren’t especially social, but most real snakes weren’t, whereas most Slytherins learned to be even if it wasn’t their natural inclination _(coffSpike)_. Mulciber was one of the ones who liked to surround himself with frie—well, a gang of friends, at least.  That probably wasn’t always different from being really friends, but Evan had only had the Gryffie trolls and Mulciber-and-Avery to watch, when it came to gangs of friends, and it looked to him as though the power games involved would be too exhausting to let real friendship as _he_ understood it survive.

But Ev probably wasn’t qualified to define ‘real friendship.’  He was friendly with almost everyone he knew, but Spike and Lucius were the only people he would have called friends that he wasn’t actually related to.  Even in their cases, he only called Lucius his friend to please Narcissa, and he only called Spike his friend because anything else would have embarrassed the poor thing until he turned quite deep colors and possibly popped and then definitely started howling about decorum and discretion and what if someone decided to hurt Evan just because Ev didn’t look dangerous and Spike had somehow narked them off.  

Either way, Ev had been quite pleased to stop being Mulciber’s roommate when they’d graduated, and he knew that having to play the part of the man’s friend had made Spike quite uncomfortable even before having Evans convinced of that friendship had rather ruined his life for a while.  Ev had to give Evans credit for being right about Mulciber, at least: he was not a nice person, as pleasant as he could be when he respected you, and anyone who still really genuinely liked him after spending time with him directing the activities was also de facto not a nice person.  She’d only been wrong about how the world worked.

“How distressing,” he murmured.

Apparently not sure whether he was serious or not (he was: quite serious. Primarily about Evans being right about anything, but also about Mulciber making things difficult for everyone, especially people who hadn’t the least idea how to expect the kinds of things he’d thought were funny even in first year, let alone defend against them), Crouch said sharply, “Indeed it is, Mr. Rosier.”

“Master Rosier,” Severus and Weatherby muttered at the same time, Weatherby in a rather less irritated and more helpful tone.  Severus perked up, and Evan tried not to fond at him too obviously in public.  It was rather like watching a kid who’d been playing with pastels stumble across a really good sidewalk artist.  Not that Evan had ever been that kid, of course...

“Very distressing,” Crouch went on, turning back to Fudge with only a flicker of acknowledging eyes in Weatherby’s direction that, to Evan, said _yes, mum/dear, got it, I shall remember the next time._    “And as neither your department nor the Auror Office has curtailed the problem—”

“Well, you said yourself it was petty crime, Barty!” Fudge protested, puffing himself out a bit, like a pidgeon.  

Severus, looking sardonic, had sagged disinterestedly back into his notebook again and started scribbling _too small, too busy, hardly important, obliviators on top of things._ Ev initially thought Spike might be either showing off for him or just grouching on paper, but then he realized Spike was writing in _English_. He was showing off for _Weatherby_. Ev didn’t know whether to laugh or be jealous or tackle him to the bench and snog him proudly in front of everybody for finally, _finally_ learning to network.

Or, maybe, it occurred to Evan with a touch of something squirmy that felt almost like guilt, for finally finding someone he had a common para-language with that would _let_ him network in a way he really couldn’t with the people Narcissa kept wanting him to. And what that squirmy feeling was about was his instinctive _no!_ against the idea that _his Spike_ was happier and felt more at home passing notes with secretaries and house elves than passing social code with the Somebodies Evan wanted to show him off to.

It wasn’t as if Evan even _liked_ most of those Somebodies, particularly. He had a great deal more fun chatting and giving out quick sketches to other shoppers in Diagon than in appointments with witches and wizards who could pay Rose  & Yew.

Severus had sent him a poem once, read it to him by music-ball during their last summer apart. Evan had remembered the bits that went, ‘I am not Prince Something, nor was meant to be, am an attendant lord, one that will do, something something to advise the prince, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, something something, cautious and meticulous… do I dare to eat a peach?”

It had made him _angry._

Well, it had overwhelmed him with missing Spike, along with all the other poems in the music ball, since it was the first time he’d heard Spike’s voice in something like a month, and letters really hadn’t been the same.

But that bit. It had been a very long poem, that one, and really strange, and Evan hadn’t understood most of it, but Spike’s voice had gone all _fervent_ on that bit, and Evan had gotten really _angry._ He hadn’t been stupid enough to show it, fortunately.

But he’d been hard put to it not to shove a ruddy peach down Spike’s throat first thing the next time they got to see each other. Or smack him over the head with the deed to some orchard, which would have been more to the point, except that Spike would have forgiven him for being choked with a peach a lot sooner.

“I’m sure the Auror Office has more important things on their minds, what with all the disappearances, you know!” Fudge was blustering on. “We have ourselves, for that matter!  Quite a lot of them are from muggle families, or half-bloods—”

Spike flinched.  Ev wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it.  He pressed his knee against Spike’s.  Even if they’d been in private, there was nothing to say: Spike wasn’t _scared,_ and he already knew there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t be worlds more stupid than useful.

“—Which is why one might have thought Muggle Relations might take an interest,” Crouch observed cuttingly.

“Well, yes, Barty, we do, dash it, that’s just the thing!  I know you can speak Mermish and Gluglug and whatnot—”¨

“Kglügvnyōk,” Crouch snapped.  

Evan had to admit he was impressed.  He’d never heard of anyone who’d spoken with a Veela and kept their brain from dribbling out their, er, ears long enough to make even a creditable attempt at their language.  Of course, not all Veela were pureblooded, but most of the ones who were at least a quarter wizard were better at human accents than the kind you really needed a beak to get right.

“—But have you ever spoken with a real, live muggle? They can get a bit excitable, you know! Every time we get one of these complaints, we’ve got to go calm down everyone in the family who had anything to do with it, find out what they know and whether they need to be obliviated, and then get them to sit ruddy still long enough to let the obliviators at them, and that is just the family, don’t forget!  We’ve also got to deal with the shops, and that’s far more complicated sometimes!  And to be perfectly frank, Barty, your Aurors only make things worse, as a rule, as far as keeping things contained goes.  Oh, you’ve got a few who know not to dress in women’s clothing and wave wands about and shout about billiwig stings, but some of them, _well._ ”

“And I’m sure Mr. Crouch is very pleased to finally be able to make things easier for your department,” Weatherby said soothingly.

Severus and Evan looked at each other and tried not to grin.  Severus was better at it, but worse at pretending he didn’t avidly want to know what Crouch was up to.  Ev didn’t blame him, especially as the odds were that funds from Spike’s own project would find their way into Crouch’s new one.

“What’s that?” Fudge blinked, a bit suspicious but game enough.

“If you’d only—” Crouch began irritably, and then jerked slightly.  He scowled at Weatherby, and then shot him a different, _Fine, you explain_ scowl.

Severus, however, either couldn’t resist, was trying to impress Weatherby, or had noticed that Weatherby actually preferred not to draw attention to himself when he didn’t have to.  He said, impatiently, but not with Crouch’s contempt, “He’s saying that the removal of personnel from your department is expressly to address the difficulties that have been bogging you down and stopping you from doing all your everyday work, Neil.”

Fudge brightened up, although still bit suspiciously, and shot _I am tempted to be admiring but can’t really trust you so-clever-you-’ll-cut-yourself boys_ at both Spike and Crouch.  “Really?”

Ev was amused to see that Crouch wasn’t impressed with Spike, although he wasn’t Not Impressed, either.  Barty, now, had compared his marks to all his classmates and come to the correct conclusion that, at least on measurable measures, he was unusually intelligent (which the Hat and his mum had probably both told him anyway), and should accept people who seemed slow to him as normal.  It seemed that Barty’s father, however, like Spike, thought himself some variation on just-about-smart-enough-for-Ministry work (literally, in Crouch’s case), and therefore it was to be expected that not everything would come easily, and therefore if a problem was frustratingly challenging a fellow just had to work harder.  As dedicated a craftsman as that self-assessment made Spike, it meant that when other people didn’t seem to be as clever or quick as he was, this did not mean that he was exceptional. It only meant that the people who couldn’t follow him were both exceptionally dumb (since he himself couldn’t possibly be anything special) _and_ not putting in the appropriate effort to keep up with life.  

Ev doubted that Weatherby ever called Crouch DF or the equivalent, even to save other people who were certainly about to get pecked.

To make Fudge feel better about it all, Ev stretched and said lazily, “Probably about time, too, Neil.  Shouldn’t wonder if the Muggle PM hasn’t been on the DMLE’s case about it.”  He pinched warningly at his indignant Spike’s sleeve to stop him hissing _Double negative!!!_  “You’ve only got so many people, after all.  Can’t be everywhere, even with apparition.  Not what with the paperwork, and having to be careful about one shows up in a Muggle area, am I right?”

“Well, that’s certainly true,” Fudge complained, “but we _have_ got only so many people, and he wants to take some of them!”

“They’ll still be doing just what they have been doing, won’t they, if Snape’s right?” Ev reasoned.  “Is that right, Director Crouch?  You’re compartmentalizing the bit that’s been taking over Neil’s office and the Aurors’, so they can get back to their normal work?”

 _“Precisely,_ ” Crouch agreed with relief, his sharp, narrow shoulders dropping a notch.  “We are forming a committee for the exclusive purpose of explaining strange happenings to muggles.”  Irritable again, he added, “It is to fall under your oversight in any case, Fudge.”

“Well, then I do think you might have told me about it without all the cloak and dagger stuff,” Fudge grumbled more cheerfully.  “Quite a good idea, really!  I’d have backed you if you’d only let me know, Barty.”

“I’m sure Director Fudge just didn’t want to get your hopes up until he knew it’d pass through the Bursary,” Evan said soothingly, hooking his ankle commiseratingly around Spike’s foot even before he saw Spike’s lips go tight at the mention of the Ministry’s budget.

“Quite right,” Weatherby lied, really quite convincingly.  They exchanged a quick, long-sufferingly amused _you’d think some career Ministry drones with loose lips would have learned before the age of forty that walls have ears_ look.  Evan broke it off largely because Spike had made a stifled noise like a cat with the start of a hairball.  His expression said it was more due to the likelihood of Crouch thinking about other people’s feelings than because Fudge didn’t understand discretion.

Of course, Spike had given up on the idea of Fudge understanding discretion the second time he’d come up to bang indignantly on their door when Evan had forgotten to make sure of the privacy charms.

“What I want to know,” Crouch said, lips drawing tight, “is why you are accosting me _today,_ Fudge.  The memo would have come around your office once the plans were fully drawn up, but we had intended to get one or two minor matters settled before alerting the department heads.”

Even Spike winced at this relatively bald announcement that only Fudge’s compliance would have been expected, and his input not desired, but apparently Weatherby was used to Crouch’s authoritarian style.

And apparently Fudge didn’t notice at all. Then again, a certain deafness to nuance wasn’t always a bad thing, in politics.  It could substitute for a thick skin.

“Oh, young Malfoy was worried about your shakeups pulling too much money from day to day business.  Said St. Mungo’s was already suffering a budget pinch—”

Spike made a very quiet noise, somewhere between a snarl and a _ha!_

“Yes, I was sorry to hear about that, old man,” Fudge patted his shoulder commiseratingly, “but I hear you’ve landed on your feet, haven’t you?”

“I,” said Severus icily, “am not the issue.”

“Malfoy’s a friend of yours, though, isn’t he?  Likely lad, I thought,” Fudge turned to Crouch.  Crouch hummed the skeptical hum of a man who knew nothing against Lucius personally but spoke fluent French.   “Poor chap’s having to take over more and more for his father.  Seems the Old Man’s been coming down with every damn thing lately.”

“Yes, my father’s been rather worried about him,” Evan agreed.  It might have been the only thing he’d ever seen his father really shaken about.  Once they’d been sure that Abraxas Malfoy’s faltering immune system really had started failing because he’d exposed himself to the curse the two of them had been developing, Dad had sauntered into Spike’s lab and inspected every single piece of equipment and very casually read Spike a two-hour lecture about safety procedures until Spike had ceased to be able to care who was insulting at him and started shouting off the Laboratory and Alchemical Safety Guide, word for word, off the top of his head and at the top of his lungs.

He’d admitted later that it had probably been nice of Ev’s dad to try, in a weird Rosierish way, to show concern for his well-being, but that hadn’t stopped him.

Come to that, the curse’s effect on Abraxas Malfoy hadn’t stopped the two of them slapping it on muggles wherever they went.  Or, rather, enchanting water-taps with it wherever they went on business trips.  The curse only lasted a few days in the metal, although it was (as Malfoy’s experience proved) quite stubborn once it got into even wizarding flesh, but according to Dad, that didn’t matter.  Not when Ev’s father was putting it on water fountains in museums and Lucius’s was putting it in the WC taps in nightclubs and places like that.

Dad had, fortunately, misunderstood the revulsion Evan hadn’t quite been able to tuck away, and reassured him that they’d woven in a side-spell that made the cursed objects look too poorly-maintained and suspiciously unwashed to be used, to anyone with magical blood.  This hadn’t made Evan feel better in the least, but he hadn’t been able to figure out anything to do about it, short of calling the Aurors down on his father and Malfoy, or killing them.

He wasn’t going to do either of those things, even if he sometimes wondered if Spike would have, in his situation.  He thought this was probably the sort of thing Spike had been fretting about, back in May, when he’d talked about being worried all their friends were turning into monsters.  Ev was a bit embarrassed about being glad that Dad hadn’t told him about all this until he’d already taken the Mark, by which time the two of them had already been doing it for years.  It made it easier for him to tell himself that destroying his family would be of limited use, on any grand scale.

The thing was, as much as most of him knew exactly how Spike would react and knew perfectly well he’d be right, there was another part of Ev that had grown up spending most of his holidays in a house with elf heads on the wall, being encouraged to play conkers with bronzed and gilded squib bits, and talking to portraits who had spent their lives trying to legalize various forms of muggle-baiting up to and including full-blown Wild Hunts, with extremely varying levels of failure.  And then there were his own cousins, who were not waiting for the Ministry’s permission when they had their Lord’s, and, while they were exercising reasonable caution, did not actually appear to be terribly worried about what might happen if they should ever get caught doing what, after all, only amounted to deprecable levels of muggle-baiting.

Granted, so much as giving a muggle a boil had been known to earn wizards a spell in Azkaban, but only if the wizard had had the colossal arrogance to draw his wand and deliver that boil through an obvious performance of magic in muggle-public, thereby producing an equally colossal stink that the Ministry had had to show a good-faith effort towards clearing up.  

After all, the Ministry of Magic had originally only been one of many offices under the Prime Minister, and its job had been to streamline the segregation of magical and mundane life and regulate magical goods, not enforce the law in any broad way.  It was trying, now that the Statute of Secrecy had become so completely successful that muggle law enforcement was completely outside wizarding life, but it just hadn’t been built for it.  The branches it had sprouted for the purpose were a rather tangled patchwork of zeal at cross-purposes.

So—he knew it was both a rationalization and a sad truth—there was actually absolutely no guarantee that, even if he did send information about the wretched health-sapping curse to either the Aurors or even the papers, anything of use would get done.  The Ministry barely cared about werewolves, for pity’s sake, and even one angry werewolf was a clear threat.  Look at the damage Greyback had done, back when Evan was a kid.  Dozens of quite prominent families had moved out of the country or had one of their children put down after he’d decided they were one of his problems.  

The Dark Lord clearly thought his followers just felt the pack-leader was unpleasantly subhuman and were being tedious about working with someone he told them to work with.  Ev wasn’t going to be the one to correct him, but he did wonder where the man had been, that he hadn’t even heard about the Year of the Blood Moon.

And even after that, regulations had only gotten harsher, not more conciliatory.  And werewolves _literally_ had teeth and claws, and the Ministry and public both _understood_ that they had them.  But had one were-hunter ever been prosecuted for what was, technically and legally, murder?  Not since ‘65, that was for sure.  And plenty of quite ordinary witches and wizards were scared stiff of muggles—en masse, at least.  It wasn’t just families like the Blacks with their blood-purity hangups.  Even wizards with muggle relatives knew about the burnings, and knew that the stories first years learned were _stories told to children,_ and remembered family members struggling with the reality of magic they could never share, whether love had won in the end or not.

No, there was no guarantee that shining a light on the curse would do any good whatsoever.  Evan didn’t even think the chances were very good, although it niggled at him occasionally that he might have been fooling himself. And even putting a stop to them wouldn’t have put a stop to the spread, according to Ev’s father.

And Spike really, really didn’t want Ev to ever have even hurt anybody, he knew, let alone killed his own family.  Severus needed him to be a safe person, a warm hearth, not an inferno.

And, frankly, he didn’t want to, even in the moments when he most thought it might be the best solution.  Spike got violence out of his system by giving it vivid voice, but whenever Evan thought maybe he should at least try to think about it as a problem, he flinched away.  His dad was a perfectly good person, by the standards of pureblood supremacists who thought muggles were dangerous vermin.  Like he’d been raised to be.  It might be both legal and just to hold him to Severus’s standards, but it wasn’t _fair._

Sometimes he did think killing Lucius’s father would be the most merciful thing all ‘round, though.  Being sick nine weeks out of ten couldn’t be fun, and Abraxas Malfoy wasn’t letting that stop him from spreading the curse either in the original way or more personally, from what Ev had gathered.  

He didn’t think Lucius knew; he thought Lucius would probably have either bragged about the curse or killed his father himself for befouling the family with the, er, more personal spreading of it.  On the other hand, it couldn’t be any surprise to Lucius that his father was more interested in variety than standards, could it?

Maybe it could.  Lucius wasn’t like Severus, who Refused To Let Himself Know certain things on purpose and quite consciously _._  In which case, it was entirely possible that at some point he would find out how dissolute his father had become since his mother’s death, and an insecure strutter like Malfoy would definitely decide that his father’s unfelt shame was his own and his House’s.  And Lucius’s wife was a Black, not a soft-bellied squish of a mother hen who, being constitutionally incapable of dealing out either fatal or maiming damage (except to egos) when he wasn’t in a blind, uncontrolled panic, had only survived Slytherin and the enmity of Gryffindor by dint of sheer deranged creativity.

Evan sighed.

“I’m sure we all wish Mr. Malfoy the best of health,” Crouch said in an agreeing but rather perfunctory tone.  Oh, right—Ev had said Dad was worried about him.  His eyes flicked to Spike, who was, silently and with a quite straight face, laughing at him.  Trust his hedgehog to know when he’d really gone off in his thoughts, and wasn’t just looking dreamy and absent for company.  Evan grinned back at him, just with his eyes.

“However,” Crouch went on, a trifle primly, “you may assure young Mr. Malfoy that all due consideration for the budget is being taken.  Naturally, if he is concerned with any particular office’s welfare, his family is welcome to make a contribution to its upkeep.”

“I don’t think he needs telling, there,” Spike muttered sardonically into his notebook.

“He said you’d certainly have his support if it wouldn’t turn out everyone else’s pockets, though,” Fudge said brightly.  “Said to tell you to let him know if he could be helpful.  Says his wife knows everyone he don’t.”

Severus sighed, and vultured himself even further into his notebook, if that were possible.

Shooting him a reproachful look for this desertion, Evan said cheerfully (well, more dutifully, in truth, although really he didn’t know _what_ Lucius was thinking, or, more properly, plotting), “Well, that’s certainly true.  I think Narcissa’s even had Sue over for tea a few times, hasn’t she, Neil?”

“Oh, has she?” Fudge asked vaguely.  “Shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t be surprised.  Can’t see that having tea’s helpful, though.”

Spike started softly banging the notebook against his forehead.  Equally softly, Evan kicked his ankle.   He got an evil glare in return, but Spike only banged one more time, most likely to prove he didn’t have to stop just because people who weren’t even wearing Cissa’s pointy shoes felt like kicking him.

“Everything all right there, Severus?” Fudge asked in mild alarm.  He wasn’t concerned about Spike’s cranial health.  Rather, he’d seen Spike go from zero to tantrum in under ten seconds before.  It was only mild alarm, though, Evan speculated, because no failure of privacy charms were involved this time.

Clearly through clenched teeth as well as the pages of the notebook, Severus gritted,, “Knowing people might be considered useful, when one is trying to form a new department without utterly gutting all the old ones.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, he did have a few suggestions!” Fudge very nearly clapped his hands.

Severus and Evan exchanged a look that said _ah,_ which on Severus’s side looked quite weary.  When they emerged from it, Ev noted that that Weatherby was regarding them with interest.  Evan smiled and shrugged, resignedly, and Severus gave Weatherby an extraordinarily long-suffering _Lucius is ridiculous_ eye-roll.  Ev could see that he was also trying to get across _and likes to feel involved,_ but however bright he suspected Weatherby of being, Severan was a dialect whose finer nuances it took time and dedication to learn.

Fudge reeled off a few names, two of which had already made it onto Weatherby’s list.  Crouch rejected two others out of hand, and gave a third a grudging consideration face before saying he’d consider it.  Rather impatiently, he asked if there were any more, and Fudge said, “Two more—Peter Pettigrew, from the Improper Use of Magic Office, and Mnemone Radford, from Obliviator Headquarters.”

At the same time, Crouch, purse-lipped and skeptical, started to point out that Mnemone Radford had died in 1649, and Severus flung his notebook into his lap and snarled, “Pettigrew?!”

Eying Severus nervously, Fudge said, “Our Miss Radford is named for the first one, Barty.  A descendent, I believe.  All right there, Severus?”

“Lucius,” enunciated Severus, ice and murder dripping from every syllable, “recommended Pettigrew.  For a promotion.”

“Well, it might just be a transfer, Severus,” Evan said reasonably.  “And he might be setting him up to fail, you know.  IUMO’s safe as Houses, even if they do have a pipeline to Eternal Records Hell.”

The non-Slytherins, Evan noticed, were all giving him funny looks.  He sighed inwardly, and explained, “Man was in our year at school.  Far as we could make out, his only talent was for wriggling his way out of trouble, and he didn’t much care how he did it.”

“How did he do it?” Crouch asked keenly, interest, against all reason, piqued.

Severus gave him a gloomy-vulture stare.  A haunted-vulture stare, even.  “What,” he asked flatly, “is the nature of the work, precisely.”

“Public-relations and Statute of Secrecy first aid, as it were,” Crouch said.  Evan would have expected that he’d have gone all sniffy about Spike wanting to do the evaluating himself and answer Crouch’s real question rather than the one he’d asked, but apparently the man could be equitable enough as long he felt the proper attention was being paid to his problem.  “For the more minor matters only, of course; in the case of major upsets, established enforcement offices with established relationships and lines of resource will continue to do their duty.  But there’s no need to call the Aurors out in a panic for every teashop that finds a nose-biting teacup has been hidden amongst its ordinary stock, and, I assure you, young man,” he looked at Severus severely, “I have no intention of spreading my department so thin.”

Severus gave him an annoyed _wait for a person to argue with you before scolding them_ look, and said, “And, no doubt, the Obliviator Headquarters has raised similar concerns.  I should think they would, since the delicacy of memory charms means both that their number is necessarily limited to those both talented and practiced and that over-use of obliviation, particularly on the same individual over time or if an error is made, can lead to a noticeable cognitive decline, in some cases quite abrupt, which could lead the muggles to investigate what they would see as a quite concerning spike, particularly if localized, in varying forms of amnesia and premature dementia.”

Crouch blinked at him, and said, “Quite,” in a satisfied tone, with a rather scathing look at Fudge which Evan didn’t think poor old Cornelius quite deserved.  It wasn’t fair to expect everyone to be Spike.  “Therefore, we’ll be dedicating a squad to these petty incidents.  It will have Obliviators on it, but also wizards,” he gestured at Fudge, presumably to indicate Muggle Relations, “familiar with muggle culture.  The tactic of first resort will be to convince the muggles that nothing inexplicable has occurred, and only if that fails will they resort to more extreme methods such as would be used in dramatic enough violations of the Statute that my Aurors _ought_ to be involved.  The working title for this office is, at present, the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee.”

Severus slumped even further, the haunted vulture turning hollow-eyed, and then anger flashed across his face.  “Right,” he snapped.  “Yes.  Lucius is absolutely right.   _Give_ Pettigrew the job.  The manipulative little weasel will be _perfect_ for it.”

Crouch eyed him, not sure how to take that.

“No, he means it,” Evan told Crouch and Weatherby, slinging a sympathetic arm around Severus’s taut back.  “He just doesn’t want to.”

Severus snarled something garbled that sounded a bit like _bloody right I don’t_ and probably was, and then convulsively thrust his notebook into his robes and shot to his feet.  He strode over to the counter and started menacing the clerk.  Actually, to Evan’s eyes, he was _trying_ to be reasonable and civil and measured, but he was in such a foul mood that he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself looming and dripping intimidation anyway.

To the clerk’s credit, he wasn’t interested in being intimidated, but he’d chosen to stand up for himself to the wrong wizard in the wrong mood over the wrong cause.  Ev saw Spike thrust out a bony finger in Fudge’s direction and not-quite-thump the counter with the heel of his hand as he leaned forward again, his shoulders almost audibly cracking back and down in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with relaxation and everything to do with arching and lengthening his neck and increasing the impression he might actually bite his irritant’s face right off.

The clerk, rather to Evan’s astonishment, was still arguing with him when the air was split by a drumroll _crackcrackcrack_ of several apparitions at once, and only cut off when the screaming started.

 

* * *

[1] What mostly impressed Slytherins about their most prominent alumnus was that he’d somehow managed to get everyone to revere his name despite, as far as anyone could tell, being such a completely _archetypal_[sidewinder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyXNBAHu32o) that he’d only gotten everything right by stumbling into it over the hem of his robes and then flinging up his staff and shouting portentously, “I MEANT TO DO THAT BECAUSE IT WAS BOTH NEEDED AND FATED!”

Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, of course, loved him for his loyal support of one of their own favorite heroes.  

Ravenclaws, on the other hand, while it was hard to say they exactly _approved_ of him, did seem to feel he was owed prominence and gratitude for, whether or not he had actually invented time-turners (opinions differed: he’d never actually written anything to support one stance or the other, and there was no possible way to know, now), making sure everyone knew about them and they could be properly researched and supported by ethical litigation while in the process of (as did appear to be so typical for him) utterly turning his life upside down and shaking it vigorously.

Even modern muggles knew he’d done it. He’d come right out and _said_ he’d ‘lived backwards.’ Fortunately for everyone, the only muggle who’d ever really been able to make the ideas of Camelot and time travel fit into his head was Samuel Clemens, and by the time the Veil of Secrecy was under serious threat, the only reason anyone was paying serious attention to Clemens was over the matter of whether dehumanizing language should prevent children being taught how to recognize and dislike dehumanization when they saw it.

If the Department of Mysteries knew how to replicate whatever Merlin had used to throw himself back hundreds of years, they certainly weren’t telling anyone else, thank goodness.  Even the best modern time-turners could only buy their users a day or so, and anyone who got their hands on one also got repeatedly hit on the head with how many problems using them to capacity could create.

  
Evan mostly found it amusing that, as long as he only did it once in a blue moon, sternly telling Spike that if a fumbler like Ambrosius Merlin could distinguish himself in a High King’s court, Severus could certainly behave at one of Narcissa’s dinner parties usually worked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : For the record, the plotline with Abraxas Malfoy and Darius Rosier started in the epistolary chapter in Wicket Gate and was explicitly referred to in Valley chapter 68. So, no, it's not coming out of nowhere even if Evan is usually pretty good at not thinking about it. :\


	18. Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Ministry of Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You do not want to be the poor slob of a copper who gets stuck interrogating the Slytherins after a capital-I Incident. No, seriously, there is not enough Migraine Mellower in the whole DMLE, there just isn't. No, it will not be fun, it—why are you cackling? Al? Al, why are you cackling?!
> 
> Or: Severus's _real_ archenemy is Sheeple, and you don't screw around with stampedes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Witness interrogation, Slytherin-in-an-interview paranoia, and midbrow literary pissing contests.
> 
>  **Hopefully temporary note** : I have a note-to-self on this that my beta deserves enormous credit for something fundamental about this chapter. However, I very slyly was very obscure about this NTS and just wrote ‘insert credit here’ so I could surprise her when I posted, because I was sure she didn’t realize she had provoked that fundamental thought-thingy or whatever it was. And of course by now I’ve _forgotten_ what it was. /AUTHORFAILSHAME
> 
>  **Notes** : On this Memorial Day weekend, I would like to thank all veterans and cops for your service—for your willingness to serve, and your patriotism to whatever country, however either you or I or anyone feels about the results—and hope that any of you who need any sort of help are not deterred from getting it either by any stigma attached by needing some or by whatever bureaucratic arthritis and red tape is involved in seeking it. The wish to serve or protect one's community is easily distorted, but it is itself good.
> 
> (And I'd like you to remember, please, later on, that I said this and I meant it.)

The dossier landed with a loud _thud_ on the table, but the boy didn’t flinch.  Typical.

At least, it was typical for a suspect to be too hardened to flinch when their dossier was that thick.  Only, the boy wasn’t a suspect, exactly, even if he was going to be treated like one for as long as he was in this room.  He didn’t have the usual toughing-it-out you-don’t-scare-me-auror look, either.  If  Alastor had been asked to name the expression he was seeing, he would have said the kid was irritated with predictable melodramatics.    

And, for a final atypical, the dossier wasn’t full of crime but of complete _shite._  Not entrapment shite Alastor or his department had made up, not today.  Nobody ever twisted their arms/gave Grimesby permission for that at the beginning of an investigation.  This was just the kind of personal-feuding snipefest that would have been well on its way towards a formal duel anywhere this side of the Atlantic twenty years ago, or a lawsuit in the States.

A couple of the boy’s schoolfellows had registered suspicions about him for a year or two after their graduation, only recently tapering off, and a few of his own friends had, in turn, registered complaints about _them_ harassing _him._  None of it had ever gone anywhere.  Notably, the kid never got in contact with the Ministry himself, either in complaint or in protest.

Alastor had noted that he was from a poor neighborhood, mind; a muggle one.  Stood to reason he might think all coppers were useless or worse whether he had anything to hide from them or not, where his wealthier friends more likely felt the DMLE was a service they could call on when they needed it.  

“Quite a collection,” he said anyway.

He might have mistaken the answer for pure dumbness or smart-arsery, except for the cool, thinking shift in the dark eyes in the second before the boy spoke.  “I did start brewing quite young,” he said, lowering his eyes modestly.  Alastor could tell at once that he’d also, started, quite young, to _use_ his voice.  “And, of course, the patent information does have to be detailed, in case of contested claims.”

“Don’t piss me about, Snape,” Alastor grunted, leaning over the table on his palms.  “You know damn well this is your Ministry file.”

Snape, evidently, was still not impressed, but he did cut out the coy codswallop.  “If the Ministry’s files don’t contain citizens’ achievements, the Ministry is more shortsighted than I had supposed.”

“Even more, eh?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, if you please, Auror.”

“Did you know you’ve got blood on your face?” he barked, changing tacks.

“Yes, I did know, thank you,” Snape snapped back, annoyance ratcheting up.  “I was informed it was evidence and I wasn’t allowed to wash it off, and I _would_ find it very strange that no one has come around over the course of the hour and a half since I was told this to _collect_ said evidence, were it not such an obvious pre-interrogation nerve-scraping tactic.”

Alastor shrugged a little—it seemed to have worked, all the same—and tossed him a collection vial.  Snape ran the rim over his face, still twanging with annoyance, and handed it back to Alastor when all the blood had been sucked in.  “You know how to use one of those.”

“If you’ve _read_ that, and it’s worth the paper it’s printed on, you know I’ve been employed in research at St. Mungo’s for several years,” Snape said crossly, folding his arms.  He had a calculating look, though.

“Don’t think I have read it, eh?” Alastor guessed.  He hadn’t in-depth, of course, but he’d skimmed closely enough to feel prepared for the one-on-one.

Snape shrugged.  “You have a lot of witnesses to process.  The Ministry has time-turners, I’m aware, but if it were standard practice for Aurors to use them to catch up on their case files during investigations… well, I suppose it might be the DoM combatting the shortened lifespans, rather than St. Mungo’s, but youthening potions are hardly cutting-edge and secret.”

Alastor stared at him.  “You really do think this is padded,” he concluded, thumping the dossier and eying Snape.  “Huh.”

The boy stared at him as if he were demented.  Alastor was not unaccustomed to that sort of stare, but he hadn’t shouted good advice at the snotty little brat even once yet.  Weird.  Usually the rope in a legal tug-of-war between ‘noble’ Houses at least knew what it was, whether or not it had volunteered.  

“All right,” he conceded, kicking the chair across from his witness out and thudding into it.  This didn’t get him the wince or sneer of your average pureblood snot, but the slightly sardonic eyebrow and wry mouth of a Slytherin from the sticks who had, eventually, been persuaded that it was to his benefit to never do that slouching sort of thing himself again.  “Snape, Severus O, Slytherin class of ‘78, ten NEWTs, about ten thousand detentions, Quidditch reserve Chaser, music club with no performances, never a prefect—”

“There’s no need to say it like that,” Snape remarked, eyeing him critically. Alastor wasn’t surprised when a suspect cottoned on to that particular bit of needling (‘never Head Boy or Girl’ worked just as well), but it usually worked anyway. Snape didn’t look defensive. He looked as if he thought Alastor should have known better, almost certainly did know better, was probably being strange on purpose for a reason that might just not be the obvious one, and might possibly, at any moment, turn into a small wheelbarrow full of rabid chipmunks. “You don’t get a badge, in Slytherin, either because of having earned it or because it’s your ‘turn.’ It’s decidedly an aristocracy.”

Alastor gave him the rabid-chipmunk hairy-eyeball back, just to throw him, which worked better. As though he hadn’t been interrupted, he continued, “Just quit your second job at Damocles Belby’s lab, having previously worked for _Cognoscat Emptor_ for a couple of summers as a junior apothecarial and potions assessor.”

“The Ministry keeps a record of one’s _detentions?”_ Snape demanded, his annoyance jumping through the roof again.

“Doesn’t have to; Wizarding Britain’s a hell of a small town.”  Alastor grinned a _thanks for confirming that_ grin at him.

“You needn’t grin,” the brat snapped.  “It’s the sort of fact that’s easily confirmed or denied, had I chosen to be cagy, for god-knows-what-reason, and force you to go to the herculean effort of a floo call, at need.”  Scowling and winching his crossed arms tighter, he added, “Perhaps I ought to have.  Had you, indeed, enquired of my Head of House, he would have informed you that the trouble I got into was _never my idea._ ”

“Uh-huh,” Alastor uttered, although he was inclined to believe it.  Snape had clearly been _exactly_ the kind of boy who every other boy in any school he’d ever walked into wanted to pop in the mouth just for being himself. And too Raveny book-smart hall-stupid to understand why, at that—or just too stiff-necked cut-off-his-own-substantial-nose spiteful to do anything about it.  “You want to argue with any of that?”

“No.”

“Anything to add?”

Snape’s head tilted and mouth pursed a little, consideringly, but in the end he decided, “No.”

“You sure?” He lifted a piece of paper and rattled it meaningfully.

Snape just gave him the are-you-mental look again.

“Your written statement here says you came to the Ministry today to get an International Portkey for the purpose of going to the continent on business.”

Are-you-mental turned into So?

“What business do you have if you’re unemployed?”

“What on earth does that have to do with anything?”

“No idea,” Alastor said, with what he’d been reliably been informed was truly _awful_ cheerfulness.  “Let’s find out.”

Annoyed again, Snape huffed, “I don’t consider myself unemployed, as such.  I’m taking a short break from having a daily schedule to do research towards the thesis which is one of the requirements for membership in the International Association of Master-Brewers.”

“Says here you already have your MP from the Most Extraor—”

“That’s the equivalent of an OWL, amongst serious brewers,” Snape interrupted him tersely.  “I’m after my NEWT.”

“In what?”

He got a new look, and decided to call this one Is Your Brain Made of Porridge.  “Po-tions,” the brat enunciated slowly.

At the same pace, Alastor replied pleasantly, “No—shit.  What are you doing your thesis on?”

“What does that—”

“No idea!”

Snape gave a disgruntled sigh, resettling his shoulders like a mangy pigeon.  “There are two curses,” he said, “that only affect humans—wizard or muggle.  Alter them forever, and it can be a quite long forever.  Both are curses not cast but implanted by some quality of the penetration of living—and therefore fluid-coated—teeth into the victim’s bloodstream. Affected parties are thereafter not much affected by other curses, including ones that can be lethal for unaffected humans—or, at least, not permanently affected.”

Alastor wondered whether Snape was going to check, at some point, to see whether his audience was following along. It hadn’t happened yet. The kid was too frowningly wrapped up in (Alastor presumed) trying to dumb it down for him to check whether it was working.

“If we can discover whether this is a trait unique to these particular curses—one of the ways in which they, as a part of their structure, as it were, change the humanity they infect—or…” he trailed off, made a speaking gesture of frustration, and then cupped air with one hand.  “Do you know what cells are?  As in, body cells, not gaol.  Animal and plant cells?”

“Let’s pretend I do,” Alastor drawled, curling back lazily in his chair. He wasn’t a cruel man, when he didn’t have to be.

“Say that human cells—it would have to be cells, rather than our magic, because it’s the same for muggles—say that the cells of our bodies are like chalices.”  Snape lifted his cupped hand.  “We are cursed, hexed, enchanted: magic comes in, the chalice is filled, a little. And yet, no other nonlethal spells change our very nature and do it intractably. Either most magic fills this chalice so very little that it takes more than a lifetime to stopper us, or, between time and external treatment and our own magic and the defenses we share with muggles, the chalice drains, or what’s in it evaporates.  We are hit with one of these two curses: something is different.  Is it that the quality of the magic is different—that it alters the nature of the cup,” his hand turned claw-like, “or draws the chalice closed around it.”  

His hand closed for a moment, and then he cupped it again.  “Or is it that the curse is so much _stronger_ than other spells that the chalice is _filled,_ to the brim, and that this means things which would otherwise happen can’t happen?  To extend the metaphor, perhaps the chalice was coated with some substance which,” he slid his other hand down into his cupped palm, so that the back of that hand molded against it, his two palms together in a lazy two-layered U-shape, “comes down over the surface and helps to evaporate or drain the water.”

Maybe because he saw Alastor’s skeptical eyebrow, he elaborated, “To loosen the magic, that is to say, so that external treatments or the weakening effects of time can pry it loose entirely. But it needs to be able to come over an exposed wall of the chalice and reach the surface of that water.  If the chalice is entirely full, this substance is entirely _under_ the water, the magic, and can be of no use.  If, however, it’s a matter of the curses acting as viruses rather than being simply strong, they may alter the body’s cells to… that is, they may cast an eternal re-filling charm on the chalice.”

With another shrug, he let his hands fall.  “If we knew which it was, we might have more success in treating them.  Belby’s palliative, flawed as it is, is remarkable, but even that isn’t a cure.  No one’s ever found a way to shake either lycanthropy or vampirism, but that’s not surprising once one realizes that they behave unlike any other curses we know and we know nothing about the mechanisms, as it were, of their magic.”

The thesis story probably wasn’t thestral crap, then, all right. Although in Alastor’s personal opinion, if the kid was stupid enough to go trying to _research vampires in the field,_ he deserved whatever he got.

Then again, the last thing anybody needed was a new vampire as bright as this brat clearly thought he was.  On the other hand, vampires who thought they were cleverer than they were didn’t last long. And if the kid really was smart, he might avoid getting turned in the first place.  Maybe.

Still, Alastor wrote down a note to make sure he’d be met with a good, reliable babysitter. Assuming the DMLE cleared him to leave the country in the first place, after today.  

As his quill scribbled into his notepad, he said gruffly, “All right, you’re a whiz.  What you’re not is a mediwizard.  You had a hell of a lot of cheek acting like one with some of those trample victims.  I see you’re a half-blood, but you’ve spent long enough this side of the Veil of Secrecy to know Good Samaritan laws don’t work when buggered-up magical first aid can do more harm than just moving a patient that shouldn’t be moved.”

Snape sighed, looking aggravated.  “Yes, I can see I’m going to have to get some sort of licensure,” he said, half to himself.  

Alastor drilled him expectantly.

After a moment, Snape said, ‘politely,’ “I do beg your pardon, was that meant to be a question?”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes (he swore they were getting younger), he _asked,_ “You have some reason other than being an over-confident berk for wading in instead of side-alonging the patients to St. Mungo’s?  You _do_ have an apparating license, I see.”

“Well, yes,” Snape said, now puzzled.  “St. Mungo’s was going to be overwhelmed and running about like a chicken with its head cut off. At least, I thought it would.  I assisted during the giant attack; I _know_ what it’s like on that end during an emergency.  On-site triage and first aid is more valuable to them, and to anyone who can be helped immediately.”

“How did you assist during the giant attack?” he asked skeptically.  He didn’t remember seeing this kid, and he would have remembered that nose.

“In the temperature damage unit.  The one in Creature Damage, obviously,” he added punctiliously.  “Although calling beings who have a language as well as a hierarchy ‘creatures’ is not only stretching the definition and bad international relations but a good way to get judged by history with disdain.   You can ask Belby, or Healers Ganush and Scrimmage.”

“History buffs, are they?”

The kid wasn’t bad in the glaring-and-such department: he actually almost felt, for a second, like a total moron.

“I was assisting them,” Alastor was told, very clearly.  “During the giant attack.  In the temperature damage unit.  In Creature Damage.  On the first floor.  At St. Mungo’s Hospital.  Because two healers there weren’t enough.  Because frostbite complicates everything.”

At a more normal pace, possibly because he could see Alastor wasn’t impressed, or annoyed enough, or whatever he’d meant talking to him like a six year old to do, he added, “Buggered-up magical remedies, as you said.  Applying any standard healing charms to frozen or frostbitten flesh is a quick recipe for gangrene.”

“Not exactly your specialty,” Alastor pointed out, folding his arms.

“It’s within my specialty,” Snape told him.  “At certain stages, the Wolfsbane potion requires that the cauldron be subjected to precise and delicate temperature control, at different and very specific speeds.  Thawing human tissues in a manner comparable to warm water exposure is hardly more difficult than that, except in the number to be treated quickly.”

“Well, big of you to pitch in,” he said, injecting just a tinge of skeptical sarcasm into his voice.

“I’m sorry?” Snape was looking at him as if he was mental again.  No, Alastor decided—more as if he’d suddenly started speaking Sanskrit.

“Everyone around you starts running all over each other, heading for the doors, and you throw up a shield around the head of the DMLE as if he couldn’t do it himself and then start sticking random witches and wizards  to the ceiling by their feet—”

“They weren’t _stuck,_ ” Snape interrupted, crossing his own arms and looking the most annoyed he’d looked yet.

“—and you don’t even try to get out like everyone else, you wait until it’s over and then start on healing work you _admit_ you’re not trained for.”

“I never said I wasn’t trained.”

Alastor flipped a page back in his notebook, pulling the dictaquill away.  He read, “Yes, I can see I’m going to have to get some sort of licensure,” and, letting the quill return to its work, raised his eyebrows at Snape.

Who sneered a little.  “Certification means bugger-all in a world of old-boys’ networks and nepotism,” he said dismissively, even contemptuously.  “If I find I need formal acknowledgement of what I know in order to be permitted to do what’s needed when it’s needed without being _harassed_ afterwards, I’ll get it.  It hasn’t been a priority to date.  In any case, when one is a potioneer who’s friends with a hypochondriac or a hypochondriac by proxy, or who is—or has a relative who is—subject to minor complaints _all the time,_ it’s convenient to be able to tell them to go bother the Healer they pay because I’m not even a mediwizard.”

Alastor leaned over the table a bit.  “And where’d you get this under-the-table training?” he barked.

“‘Under the table,’ I beg your pardon,” Snape snapped back, eyebrows clanging together.  “From my _mother,_ from books, from assisting Madam Pomfrey in those of my ‘ten thousand’ detentions when someone other than my Head of House was assigning them and didn’t feel I needed a particularly serious punishment, from not wanting to bother her every five minutes.  How many times have _you_ wanted to punch or hex me since you sat down?  And _you’ve_ got to fill out paperwork if you do, which I imagine would at least make you think once about it, if not twice.”

Alastor’s mouth tugged up a little, he couldn’t help it.

“Besides,” Snape said wryly, “I didn’t make up having friends like that.  I can’t always put them off.  They keep thinking I’ll have all the answers in certain areas, so, really, I have to have them.”

Alastor had three flashes of conviction in brief succession.  First he was sure the kid was playing on Alastor’s old school House’s ideals, trying to play him.  Then he was scolding himself, reminding himself that Snape had no reason to know that Alastor had been a Hufflepuff; he certainly couldn’t have known who would be interrogating him today.  Then it occurred to him that Snape was a Slytherin who was used to being in trouble, and for all Alastor knew he might have made sure to know as much about _all_ the Aurors as he could.  Not a comfortable thought, so it was the one  Alastor decided to bank on.

“Well, let’s see if you do have all the answers, then,” he said sternly.

“Oh, really,” Snape murmured, looking irritated again.  “ _Transitions_.”

“Say what?”

“I only said,” the kid said with a nearly-Knockturn sort of bravado to the set of his chin, “that I’d expect more grace of Dashiell Hammett.”

“Yeah?  Well, try not to expect a martini, either.  Why do you want me to know you read muggle books?”

“Maybe I want to stop you before you fall into one of the more appalling noirish clichès, or maybe I’ve just been mistaken for a cardboard-cutout of other Houses’ ideas of Slytherin often enough to recognize the warning signs.  Why was it important to you that I know you could cap my reference?”

“I’m asking the questions,” Alastor reminded him. He’d meant it to be stern, but he knew he’d lost control of the interview, just for the moment, when the little twerp made a graceful and _ever-so-slightly-mocking_ acquiescing gesture and his own eye twitched in violent impulse.  Pretending that hadn’t just happened, which was the only possible way to get the control back without giving the masochistic little chit yet another victory, he squared the folder on the table.  “Let’s say my idea of a cardboard-cutout Slytherin is one who has a reason for what he does, Snape.  What do you say to that?”

“I say a world where anyone acts for no reason at all would be a terrifying one to live in.  Even children throw tantrums because they hope to make an impression on their fellow-beings, to communicate feelings and if possible to change behaviors they don’t like.  Even that isn’t wholly unpredictable.”

“Yeah, well, ‘preventing noir clichès’ isn’t a very good reason, when you’re being questioned—”

“Certainly it is,” Snape interrupted, an eyebrow sliding up cockily.  “Your features fall into the category of rugged, I live in monochrome, and I do not wish to be either choked by tobacco smoke or kissed.”

Alastor centered his elbows on the table and leaned forwards.  He demanded, “Do you think you’re capable of not being a smartarse for five minutes put together?”

“…History suggests not,,” Snape answered.  This time, though, he actually sounded a bit abashed, if not actually meek.  Alastor thought it might have been as close to apologetic as he got.  “In fact, history most likely says ‘surely you jest’ and falls over in its chair in paroxysms of mirth, re-breaking my nose on its way down.”

Alastor sighed, and pinched the bridge of his own nose.  “You might want to get a handle on that,” he suggested.

“I do,” Snape assured him glumly, “only it doesn’t take.”

Alastor sighed again, and pinched harder before letting his hand fall.  “I think,” he said, folding his arms on the table and putting his scowl back on, “you want me to know you read muggle stuff because you know our friends today were an anti-muggle group.”

Snape frowned.  “It’s possible,” he said slowly, “although I didn’t intend that. Yes,  considering the blood-status related pattern in the disappearances, I suppose I could have acted on that intuitive assumption, without realizing I was.  Although I wouldn’t _actually_ assume it; the style of this attack was completely different.  But, yes, there is at least a superficially apparent motive for those… Still, I should hardly have said ‘know.’  I _know_ no more than anyone else: what we all saw.”

“Oh, but is _that_ really true,” Alastor countered, leaning forward skeptically again.  “‘Anyone else’ was just rushing to get out—”

“Regardless of whomsoever was in their way,” Snape muttered, his eyes flashing with ire.  “Sodding _cattle_.”

“—And you just turned over a bench and hunkered down to thin out the herd, cowboy.”

Snape sat bolt upright, the eye-flashing now aimed at Alastor.  “By _moving_ some of them to reduce their running over each other,” he clarified angrily.  “Don’t make it sound as if I killed them.”

“You stuck them on the ceiling,” Alastor reminded him.  He was, himself, a bit stuck on this point.  It wasn’t a spell he’d ever heard of before.

“They _weren’t stuck!”_ Snape insisted.  “I didn’t glue them there to be targets!  They were perfectly capable of running outside the anti-apparition field like everyone else.  Just upside down.”  

“St. Mungo’s reported about twenty concussion cases,” Alastor mentioned.

Snape shrugged.  “Me da and his mates watched Newcastle and Nottingham at St. James in ‘74 on the telly,” he said.  “I heard all about it.  Incessantly.  All that summer.  And the Manchester United business, that year _and_ the next, and the stabbing at Blackpool.  You don’t mess about with a stampede.  Concussions aren’t half so dangerous—well, not quite so dangerous. Not unless they’re repeated. Especially with prompt magical attention.  Anyway, tell me at least three-quarters of those concussions weren’t on people who’d also been stepped on, go on.”

Alastor hadn’t thought he’d made any faces of confirmation, but Snape nodded sharp satisfaction and said, “The human body isn’t as good at twisting to break a fall and absorb its impact as the feline, but it does generally make an effort.  Even an adult wizard’s magical reserves will also kick in with ‘accidental’ magic during that sort of an incident, or we’d run through Quidditch players a good deal faster.”

“You going to tell me you were relying on magical reflexes to stop falling injuries but not trampling ones?” Alastor growled.

Snape raised an eyebrow.  “What I’m telling you and have told you is that you don’t mess about with stampedes.  However, if you ask me now that I have a moment to consider the problem… I haven’t studied the matter but would expect the data to support the hypothesis if such a study were made.  Falling is a single moment of sharp, clarifying fear.  One knows what’s going on, one can see what’s approaching, the problem is defined. Being run over by a mob, whether angry or terrified, is confusing, I should think.  With falling, the answer is simple, if it can be enacted: soften the impact or don’t hit the ground.  In the other case, with assault coming from all sides…”  He made a tight, uncomfortable face, and his shoulders hunched a bit.  “Not so easy, perhaps, to know what to do, even reflexively.”

  
Alastor would have bet his third wand that he now knew what it looked like when Snape was lying, and it was the way his mouth had gone bitter and ashamed when he’d said ‘perhaps.’  Saving that tidbit for when he needed it, he said, “You say ‘you don’t mess with a stampede,’ but you stayed put right in the middle of it.  In the middle of the attack, too.  Knew you’d be safe, did you?”

Snape curled half an upper lip at him, just slightly, more in disappointment than contempt.  “Knew?  Hardly.  But once I had gotten cover and had a chance to look, I could see that it was only hexes being thrown about, not curses.  Thoroughly schoolyard, really, and more sparks and noises than hexes.  Most of the initial damage was people throwing up defensive spells that ought not to have been used in crowds—knocking each other over and into benches, using mirror spells that made the hexes more powerful and worked like actual bloody mirrors, sent them off at angles of deflection, not back at their casters.   Only useful in a duel, when you’re standing directly across from each other in a warded circle,” he added in disgust.

“Good of you not to try to get out in all that chaos,” Alastor said brightly, letting his eyes be as cynical as he could manage.  “Guarding Crouch, too.”

“I didn’t give a toss about Crouch,” Snape said with an expression that meant he was thinking _that rude, self-important wanker_.   It was an expression Crouch inspired in a lot of wizards, although most had enough sense to try and pretend he didn’t.  “Except in that he had the sense not to panic, and anyone competent who wasn’t either panicking or attacking was useful in that moment and welcome behind our bench and my shield.  I’d just been introduced to his aide, though,” he added thoughtfully, “and he seemed a worthwhile sort of person.”

“You’re going to tell me you set up a barricade instead of getting yourself out for the sake of this secretary bloke you’d just met?” Alastor demanded, letting his eyebrows crawl up.  “When you could have got out by the ceiling yourself, I assume?  Or are you such a decent bloke you did it just to cowboy?”

“Not a verb,” Snape muttered under his breath, a muscle under his eye going tick-tock as he glared at Alastor.  Louder, he said, “If you must know, I’d come here with my flatmate, and he’d proven to me only yesterday that he doesn’t react quickly when assaulted.  Taking cover was the only option.”

“How did he prove it?” Alastor pressed instantly.

One of Snape’s shoulders hunched again, apparently in resentment of the question.   “A girl slapped him.  He… stared at her with his eyes crossed for nearly a full minute, and then drifted into the other room and sat down on the sofa in a shocked stupor for a quarter-hour.  It’s… it’s not a helpful reaction to being surprised, and I couldn’t have dragged him out quickly enough, right side up or otherwise.”

“What girl?” Alastor asked, in case he needed to follow up for some reason, or Rosier pressed assault charges, or the girl pressed other charges.

Snape made an exasperated how-should-I-know gesture.  “A _girl._  He’s a portraitist, he wines and dines his clients all the time. They expect it. Well, I say he does, but I understand his grandfather has relatively clear guidelines about when it’s done on the firm’s sickle and when they allow the clients to play host. A matter of who does and doesn’t live on their interest, I expect. Is the portraitist a potentially fretful artiste one is patronizing, or is the portraiture process a perhaps never to be repeated purchase of great moment or luxury? In which case, it should be treated as such, and the client should leave feeling greatly respected and very well served. If only, although in fact not only by any means, for the purpose of word-of-mouth advertising.”  

“You must have some idea who it was. It was in your flat, wasn't it? You were there,” Alastor pointed out, dragging Snape back to the important bit by what felt like main force.

Snape made a deeply disgusted noise, and scorned, “I don’t take note of everyone who thinks it means something profound when Rosier blinks too fast trying to keep awake and they think he’s batting his eyes at them.”

“But you must have _seen_ her, right?”

Snape raised an eyebrow full of distaste.  “It’s a two-bedroom flat, and that’s not counting his studio and my lab. I prefer my own private life to be private, and while the baseline state of humanity is largely one of self-delusion, I like to think I extend others who don’t flaunt their own the same courtesy.  You don’t imagine a lady would slap a man and then stick around while he stared silently into space for fifteen minutes, surely.”

Alastor eyed him, but Snape was glaring pure _don’t even TRY asking about my private life, my private life is NOT RELEVANT_ at him.  There was no reason to think it _was_ relevant just now, and he still had at least seven interviews to plow through before he could go home. Could well have been more, depending on whether Grimesby interrogated anyone else into fits of incomprehensible hysteria and whether Rufus confused too many witness into stymied or offended staring fits while trying to lead them into cunning knots of self-contradiction. Besides, he could always follow up later.

So Alastor shrugged and moved on.  “In any case, you _did_ stay in one place during the strike, so you had a better look at the attackers than most.  Recognize any of them?”

Snape gave him the are-you-mental face again.  “How would I have recognized any of them?  They all had hoods on.”

“Any of ‘em face you?” he asked patiently.

“Yes,” Snape said—rather to his surprise.  “I don’t mean anyone stood there and stared into my eyes, but yes, I didn’t only see their backs, if that’s what you mean.”

“And?”

Snape shrugged.  “And their hoods fell over their faces rather.”

“Didn’t recognize any wands, any boots?”

Now it was Snape’s eyebrows’ turn to shoot up.  “Any _boots?”_

Alastor tapped the folder.  “Yeah, Snape, boots.  I do know who your friends are, hypochondriac or not.  You’ve been joined at the hip with two of your generation’s premier clotheshorses for years, with three more in and out of orbit.”

“Will you _stop_ mixing your metaphors, good god.   In any case, I don’t know what you mean, ‘three more.’  Lucius, I assume, but other than that…”

“I mean the Black kid and his friend Lockhart.”

“Bite your _tongue,_ ,” Snape blurted, evidently on sheer appalled reflex.  “Lockhart may hang about people, but it doesn’t mean _they_ have anything to do with _him,_ or listen to any of his nonsense.  And Regulus Black is not a clotheshorse,” he added, offended in a different way, “he just raids his ancestors’ wardrobes with happy results.”

“Whatever,” Alastor said, gruff with refusing to laugh.  “You haven’t refuted the other three.”

“No, but I don’t have anything to do with their fripperies,” he protested, opening his hands helplessly.  “Are you mad?  I say ‘you look lovely today, Narcissa,’ thereby avoiding dire consequences, and that is the end of it.  I am _not involved_ with their tailoring, and I am _absolutely_ not invited to any shoe-shopping, including for my own damned shoes,” he ended, a little helplessly.  “She took a _mold of my feet_.”

“And you’re not even married to her,” Alastor drawled.

“Thank _god,_ ” Snape agreed fervently, shuddering.  “No better friend, but I’d sooner wed a rabid crocodile.  It would make no practical difference to me, and I wouldn’t have to duel Lucius about it.”

Alastor noted that Snape sounded as if dueling Lucius Malfoy would be, compared all the rest of it, a mild nuisance at worst, although he wasn’t sure quite what he should take that to mean about Snape, Malfoy, or Mrs. Malfoy.  “So,” he said doggedly, “you didn’t recognize anyone, then.”

“I said that.”

“Not exactly.”

Snape huffed out an aggravated breath.  “No,” he said, “I can’t say I did recognize anyone.  Or any wands.  And certainly not any boots.”

“Other people did notice the hoods,” Alastor mentioned, “but if they fell down so far that no one could see any faces, you wouldn’t think they’d be able to walk a straight line, let alone attack.  What do you think about that?”

Snape shrugged.  “I don’t know.”

“But what do you think?”

“Well, for one thing—may I?”  He raised his handkerchief.

“May you _what?_ ”  Alastor asked warily, edging back.

Bizarrely, Snape looked pleased with him.  “All right, then, have you got one?”  When he’d taken it out, the kid went on, “Hold it flat over your eyes, then.  Tightly.  Keep your eyes open.”

“Put your hands on the table.  Palms down,” Alastor instructed him flatly.  Snape held his palms up in the I’m-unarmed gesture, and did as he was told.  Cautiously, keeping his eyes on Snape until the last possible second, Alastor plastered the cloth over _one_ eye.

The world went black-veiled, but not black.  His periphery was shot to hell, but he could mostly see okay, especially where the light was.  That being the case, he risked covering both.  Same deal.

“See?” asked Snape.  He hadn’t moved a muscle, other than to speak.

“It’s not great,” Alastor said, pulling the cloth away from his face.  “And it gets more opaque, farther away from the eyes.  A hood’s not exactly plastered on.”

Snape shrugged.  “Unless it’s a glamour.  Might not be there at all.”

“You think you can use glamours in the Ministry?”

“ _I_ don’t know,” Snape said, looking scornful again.  “I would have thought you could, actually.  Ministry workers have spots and grey hair and vanity like other people, I should think. I heard Crouch speaking in a way that suggested that he doesn’t think about security measures at all, and he’s the head of the DMLE.”

Alastor leaned forward again—noting that Snape, in response, sighed a little in irritation that wanted Alastor to know he’d used the gesture once too often.  That was unusual.  Usually, when people noticed one of the tells he was feeding them, especially Slytherins, they either looked smug and secretive or tried to pretend they’d never noticed at all.   _He_ pretended not to notice, and asked, “You don’t think I don’t know you’re holding back on me, do you?”

“…I’m not sure,” Snape drawled, droll.  “May I have a moment to line up your auxiliary verbs?”  

Snot.

“See this?” Alastor slid a page across the table.  

Snape scanned it, dark eyebrows slowly rising, then knitting in what looked like real confusion, as far as Alastor could tell.  

“Standard form by now.  Dumbledore sends it to us when he wants a candidate for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post vetted.  There’ve been a few real corkers tried to slip in under his nose.  He doesn’t bother if he’s not interested, though.  So I’m thinking you’ve got more thoughts about Ministry security and dark hoods than you’re bothering to share.  And I’m wondering why you’re not more interested in being more helpful, Mr. Snape.”

To his credit, maybe, Snape didn’t try to duck it, and (apparently characteristically) he only looked more annoyed yet, not fretted.  “I don’t mind being helpful,” he said crossly.  “I do mind if you decide I’ve given a matter previous consideration relevant to current circumstances, perhaps in some conspiratorial way, because I can come up with speculative solutions to problems quickly when they’re put to me.”

“How many times a week does someone remind you to speak English?” Alastor wondered idly.

Snape glared.  “I _said,_ maybe I could come up with hyp—I could make guesses, but I _don’t trust you_ not to say Aha, He Has Thought About These Things Before, especially if I happen to hit on something your experts think align with—that is, if I guess something your experts think is right.”

“Oh, I heard you the first time,” Alastor explained, “I was just wondering.”  Snape choked in impotent infuriation. Which, he had to admit, was more fun than you usually got at one of these dos.

Actually, he hadn’t been so much wondering as playing for time while he tried to work out whether to press the issue.  Figuring out whether the witnesses had thought about those things before was why the question was on his list in the first place.

It took him another moment to decide, and then he tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and shoved it across the old,  scarred, yellowing holly of the table with two fingers.  “That’s what they call a double-bluff, is it?” he said, not really asking.  “One of those ‘once I bring it up myself you’ll never know for sure things.”

“Does ‘if your mark knows what you’re doing it obscures the results of the ploy’ count?” Snape asked.  It looked like a serious question, not a gambit: as if Snape thought they were there to have a bloody discussion of semantics all afternoon, maybe over tea and cakes.  “I wouldn’t count that in the same category.  There’s no bluffing involved… well,” he amended thoughtfully,  “I suppose there could be, theoretically, in _this_ sort of situation, but the principle extends to, oh, marketing, and the placebo effect, and—”

“Let’s just leave it at we’ll have to determine whether you were involved some other way, shall we?” Alastor stopped him.

Snape looked _disappointed._  Not just a snot: a nutter.

Forbearing to roll his eyes, Alastor shoved the paper at him again.  “ _Stipulating_ that,” he drawled, speaking to Snape in his own language (for a second he could have sworn the kid was about to stick out his tongue), “let’s have your thoughts anyway.”

Snape shrugged, and started writing.

Ten minutes later the paper was ridiculous on both sides, with footnotes and added-on-later notes going in all directions. Alastor started to skim it.  He read:

 _Known anti-app/portkey field?  —NO —previous knowl. irrev’t; testable._  
If anti-a/pk f:  
—elf help  
—‘disillusionment’ (— dissolution-ment!!*) spell until in (possibly prevented)  
—disguise until in (polyjuice not preventable, unmagical disguises not p’ble, would have heard about strikes etc if attempted glamour-prohibition?)  
WHY NO SNEAKOSCOPES —people travel for sneaky-not-illegal reasons, obv., would never shut up  
—disguise once _in/change in WC & disillusion on way back THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR A SYSTEM THAT IS AT PEACE WITH GRAFT/BRIBERY EVEN AT THE LOWEST LEVELS_  
—hooded robes enchantable to be invisible but not obscure the wearer?  Poss?  Ask FF

_* nts: write down more spell names that sound unfitting and stupid! Spells of stupid charmsmiths fail to function! (nts: work out how to get M to owl crosswords without admitting lapse. Acquire Quibbler for proof of available inferiors? Last-resort; XLgd should not be encouraged.)_

At this point he looked up, putting the paper away into Snape’s file before it gave him a worse headache.  He’d fob it off on Grimesby, who’d threatened a hundred-year-old witch with Azkaban and made her cry an hour ago, just because he’d got her to say that there certainly were more Muggleborns mixing with normal witches and wizards when she was a girl and Albie Dumbledore had always been a strange one.  This wasn’t the smartest time to express anti-Muggle sentiments to an Auror, but that was pretty damn mild as they went, and considering she’d been led to it Alastor wasn’t even sure she’d meant it that way.  

The first bit was pure fact, partly due to pureblood losses during the Grindelwald wars.  As for the second, well, Dumbledore _was_ a decidedly odd duck, and liked to play it up.  Sounded political all put together, but was it really?  No way to know, not off a dictaquill transcript and when she’d been leading-questioned into it.  Grimesby deserved Snape’s handwriting, and even his abbreviations.

The handwriting wasn’t exactly awful, as such.  It was, however, the hand of someone who was just getting over a childish, self-important writing style, and still on the ornate side, and he’d been writing quite fast.  More than that, about halfway down the first side of the page he’d realized he wasn’t going to have enough paper and his letter size had shrunk dramatically. More than _that,_ half his footnotes and ‘nts’ things weren’t just in the margins but sideways.

So Alastor just asked, “Who’s FF?”

“Professor Flitwick,” Snape said, in a tone that said this should have been perfectly obvious to one-celled sea creatures that lived off New Zealand.

“What the hell is ‘poss?’” He could work out note-to-self, when it was next to an asterisk, although not why Snape would _write_ a note to himself in a document he was never going to see again.

Snape stared at him, and crossly explained, “ _Possible._ ”

“Oh, well, obviously,” he said dryly.

“You only gave me one sheet,” Snape accused, in a tone that said if he ran into Alastor at the Leaky Cauldron in ten years he’d still be harping on this grievance, and any holes in what he could have given Alastor otherwise were Alastor’s own damn fault.

That cinched it for Alastor. They went through the rest of the routine questions, and he certainly intended to follow up during the investigation, as he would with everyone, and the babysitter he intended to have the Balkan ‘Department of Magical Tourism’ (ha) sic on the boys when they got to Bulgaria and Romania would help with that.

But the flatmate had spent a considerable amount of time, going by the remote dictaquill set up in the waiting area, talking to this kid about how this couldn’t possibly be the same as the disappearances.  He’d gone through a whole litany about how it was off-pattern, the disappearances were clear pureblood-supremacy messaging unless they were something the vanished were doing themselves, whereas this had impacted a quite random group of witches and wizards—

—Including the head of the DMLE, Snape had injected at that point, and hadn’t commenced until the head of Muggle relations had shown up and stayed for quite long enough for a hunter to do nearly anything in preparation but brew a potion.

The flatmate had argued that there wasn’t any clear message coming out of this, and Snape had asked if one had come out of the giant attack. The flatmate had worried for a while over whether that attack and this one were a separate group-or-madman from the disappearances, or this was a completely third party, or what they were seeing was an attention-grab followed by mood-setting and then an escalation.  

It had been more or less like every other conversation everyone else was having, with the exception that most of the rest hadn’t known Crouch and Fudge (who’d both been bustled out as soon as possible) had been involved at all.  The only other major difference was that the DADA-post applicant had injected into it the charming pieces of information that a) even muggle serial killers had been known to get more bloodthirsty and unhinged over time as their victim count grew, and that b) he’d explained the escalation inherent in dark arts dementia to Rosier already.  

That had cut off their conversation. Rosier had been unhappy and subdued in his cheerful peaches and chocolate colored outfit during his interview.  He’d got quite distressed about explaining his mood, saying he thought Snape was probably right (he’d explained what about) because Snape usually was. Especially when you most wanted him not to have said anything at all.  

And as for Snape himself—well, Alastor wasn’t crossing anyone off his list yet, and with a double-bluffer (or whatever the kid wanted to call it) the hell of it was that you really never did know until you knew.  But he’d crossed wands across this desk with loonies and canny spiders and smooth talkers and very convincing wizards who had only slightly more soul before the Kiss than after.  He’d _never_ had a Guilty act like Alastor was an OWL examiner who’d called ‘time’ after an outrageous five minutes on the written test.

Or a Not-Guilty either, for that matter.  

The point was that either Snape was a better faker than the sociopaths, with bludgers of solid titanium,  or he was simply and fundamentally sure that being investigated was not something he should be afraid of, however much bother it would be.    And if that all-over-the-place bouncing back and forth between situationally-idiotic snapping and easily divertable, totally-absorbed swottishness was faked, then the stage had lost one hell of an actor and Alastor would stop nagging Rufus about his tea kitty debt for a _month._

So when the Aurors let them go, it was only with a tracking spell, each with a portkey that they could activate to bring them home in case of an emergency, which would activate on its own if they didn’t do it themselves when it started glowing blue and hopping.  They didn’t demand the pair stay in the country, although Alastor pulled them into his office on their way out and made damn sure they understood all hell would break loose if they lost the portkey or broke the trace.

Snape made an irritated yes-yes sort of noise, and Rosier said firmly, in a discussion-ending tone that made Alastor think all the addressing each other by surname was your classic Slytherin in-public minotaur shite, “I’m sure we shall feel all the safer for having them.”

“You should,” Alastor growled.  “Damn stupid thing to do, taking a holiday with vampires.”

“It’s _research,_ ” Snape corrected, annoyed.

“Their skin color’s supposed to be different after they’re changed,” Rosier said greedily, his eyes lighting.

“Well, that’s only sense; skin color’s affected by blood, so—”

“Yes, but it’ll mean a whole new palette—”

“Research could be even stupider, if they take offense,” Alastor went on growling.  “They’ll be faster and stronger than you and know the territory and want you for breakfast.”  He looked the better-fed Rosier up and down.  “And dinner.  If you want a _hope_ of getting out of there alive and the same wizards who went in, you’ll have to exercise _CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”_

“Eternal,” Snape said, instead of looking impressed or cowed or even jumping like Rosier.  His funeral.

Also, what?  “What?” Alastor asked, irritated in his turn.

“Eternal vigilance,” Snape elaborated in a matter-of-fact sort of way while Rosier tried to hide a growing smile behind his hand.  “‘It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.’”

Alastor stared at him.  Rosier was trying to swallow a laugh, and very nearly choking himself to death on it.

Looking as if he was trying to be comforting but in fact just barely managing to be nothing worse than awkward, Snape offered, “John Philpot Curran, a few years before the Irish Rebellion.  It was about mayoral elections in Dublin.  Everyone gets it wrong.”

Alastor pointed at the door.  “Get out of my office.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** :  
> 1\. With apologies to anyone who thinks Severus should have said ‘the United Irishmen Rebellion.’ I am sorry if the other term is offensive (because I rather suspect it is, even if Wiki lists it first), but thinking demographically, I don’t think he would have bothered to be correctly sensitive to the sensibilities of people who weren’t even in the room. And even as far as considering people in the room goes… this is Snape. It’s a _very_ situational dice-roll.
> 
> 2\. When I was developing Severus, playing him at Hex Files, Moody was played by stellastars. I’m not really basing mine off hers the way Albus and Gildy are based off Hex versions of those characters, but oh did those two have fun together. One time Severus at-least-half-convinced Moody he was hallucinating reptiles because he was ‘high on croc,’ and then there was the time he anticipated Moody out-paranoiding him and it ended up in Moody being floated to Albus’s office petrified and tied up in ribbons…
> 
> (Moody was upset about that one mostly because it left him totally unsure what to make of not being killed while he was helpless. Damn these Slytherins and their mind games!!!!)


	19. Air and Parchment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily blows Severus a raspberry, Dumbledore has a parent-teacher conference, Narcissa gets mud in the mail, and the babysitter... eats bugs? Wrong minion, Evan...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you and your viewing mechanism can both read from pdf, please view this chapter [here](http://orig06.deviantart.net/ee73/f/2016/172/9/1/valley_91_air_and_parchment_by_potionpen-da73o67.pdf#page=1&zoom=page-actual,-4,800)!
> 
> In which case:  
> The text color is not being used by me the author to tell you who is speaking. The characters are using quills (or pens) and ink, and most of them have access to more than one inkpot. Some of them may stick to one signature color, some will take advantage of having choices. Their handwriting won't change.
> 
> I would have actually handwritten at least as much of this chapter as the last epistolary one (I badly wanted to!), but my time and I are, at this point, considerably less unemployed. n,n;;
> 
> ...On which note, my workplace is about to change hands. So... the future is not dark but somewhat unstable? n,n;;

For the quill-and-ink version, please view this chapter [here](http://orig06.deviantart.net/ee73/f/2016/172/9/1/valley_91_air_and_parchment_by_potionpen-da73o67.pdf#page=1&zoom=page-actual,-4,800)!

* * *

Dear Naj,  
You may tell Evan that I wasn't previously annoyed with him, but I certainly am now. What a thing with which to begin one's correspondence! Really, Severus, you must restrain your impulses to have an appalling effect on our Evvie, however amusing or 'bracing' an effect you think it has on everyone when a gentleman of his stature forgoes all social grace. He is in fact a gentlewizard of some stature, however inconvenient you find the fact, and I'm sorry, darling, but there really is a limit to the number of ways in which one wizard can afford to misbehave in the same decade.

Thank _you_ for asking after our collective health. Draco is getting less wobbly, but my kneazle takes longer naps. Hers are at least an hour long, as a rule, I'm sure, and if they aren't, I wouldn't know because she doesn't wake up _noisily._ I'm sure he recognizes his Mummy now, and you needn't laugh, because it's quite as inconvenient as it is lovely. I almost always look after him myself during the day, but of course I can't when we have guests, and Lucius won't hear of it at night. I'm afraid Draco doesn't respond very well to the elves. I think it might be because that Dobby always moves so _abruptly_ , it startles the poor thing when he needs soothing. I don't think he can tell the difference between one elf and another yet, and although Dobby hasn't actually _dropped_ him, well, you can _imagine_ what it would be like, someone jolting you from side to side when they ought to be rocking you, and too young to even understand,, let alone to decide whether or not to trust the little oaf!

I insist that Lucius spend some time every day with him, but the poor man is completely at a loss. I think he's just reading out the accounts to Draco as he does them, and I'm sorry to say that he may be copying his father's dreadful behavior in this respect. I can hardly bring myself to blame him, though. He's terribly occupied these days—or, rather, I should say 'quite' occupied, as he's rather enjoying himself. Of course, he's not so well respected as his father yet, but at least the poor man's health being so bad has the silver lining of letting Lucius in on the ground floor of some new committees as his own man, as well as having to follow Abraxas's instructions in all of the ones where the members are all three times his age and have little interest in the opinions of anyone who hasn't been sitting at that table with them for fifty years. I'm afraid he's not quite resigned to the experience of sitting through the latter, though I've told him and told him it's only to be expected.

And now I shall give in and ask why Evvie thinks I've reached across the Channel to be annoyed with him from hundreds of miles away, although you needn't tell him I did. How are you finding the Balkans? You must let me know if you need anything, darling. You wouldn't accept a knut when I was so worried about Draco, so you mustn't be silly when it goes the other way.  
Your devoted  
Cerberus

 

* * *

 

Narcissa,  
If Luke's reading _anything_ aloud to Draco, it will be good for him. See if you can persuade him to hold the boy while he does, although I recognize this may be an uphill battle. Apply to my mother if you require cogent argumentation.

If you want Evan to wear his public-face mind when he writes you on matters personal (or, indeed, on matters of personal insanity), you'll have to tell him yourself. I'm not a monster, I hope.

I must say, however, that should you entertain any hopes of a travelogue sort of letter from either of us, I do advise you not to let Evan draw you into some sort of meaningless tiff. He used to be rather good at those (which is to say travelogue letters; tiffs only, as you well know, serve to make him confusedly sulky and paint at tragically slow speeds and redo all his canvasses thrice with a great deal of whinging about why nothing looks right), and I have no intention of making a fool of myself trying.

We did hear about a new department in its first stages of formation, just before we left. Neil Fudge seemed most impressed by Luke's input, although Fudge came late to the party and not all parties involved seemed inclined to be swayable. I was myself much struck by one of your good husband's personnel suggestions, and I'm sure he will understand what it meant to me to be presented with the opportunity to support him in it.

You shouldn't bring up a medical mystery if you don't want me to make enquiries. It's been a _very long time_ with very little improvement or even alteration , by my estimate, except in the details. Or am I meant to take discretionary advantage of the change in locale and seek out brave new healers' journals accessible only through barely-adequate magical translators and human ones of limited-to-no medical education?

I'm not entirely sure why you think I would need that sort of assistance while travelling with your cousin—who is a wizard possessed, as you say, of both means and stature. Nor am I in fact myself either quite skint or without prospects or the means of trade just at the moment, as it happens, but I will endeavor not to be 'silly.' We have acquired bed and board without without catastrophe. Evan was not quite prepared for a convivial atmosphere rife with rakia, which is to say that failing to mention to stupid Englisher tourists that the local beverage may reach 190 proof is a common and classic game of hilarious baptism that a Slytherin as well traveled as he should bloody well have been expecting even the bulk of his peregrinations _have_ been under parental aegis before now. Nevertheless, we must, I am informed at a length I will not call defensive, take some comfort that the consensus seems to be that he acquitted himself well.

To answer your question: as I understand matters, the Auror we both spoke to after the incident at the Portkey Office was alarmed at the idea of British wizards traipsing lamblike into the dens of vampires, and as a result the Balkan Preternatural Embassy (I think that's the best translation) has assigned us a guide. Evan doesn't like him. Take it as a complime

 _Disliking the man is not an appropriate way of talking about the issue, Cissa. Spike is prey to_ hideous understatement _and this is one of the times we should patiently and lovingly ignore him. This_ person _does not look like he is well named, but I assure you, Cissa, he is well named. What I mean by 'does not look like he is well named' is that after you read enough of Spike's more horrible books you do not expect an Igor to be tall and skinny and smoke revolting brown tobacco cigarettes. You_ do _, however, expect one to look in an impertinent manner where they have no business_

Evan has managed to conflate at least three different literary characters together with a grotesque amalgam that exists only in the collective imagination of muggles who have watched too many photographic-plays of a particular sort. I've no idea how he did it, unless it's to do with the way magic works the way we expect it to even though no one's ever come up with any theoretically coherent reason why it should. (One of my Sherwood connections recently reminded me of my burning desire to research the living blazes out of this question, but I suppose there's too much on my itinerary at the moment.)

I'm told I am woefully missing the point, but I shall defend my quill to… perhaps not the death, but Evan's not getting it again while he's drunk off his head, distraught over nothing, and making no sense whatever.

Although I will go so far as to agree that any wizard who smokes tobacco cigarettes, especially in a country so carpeted with such a variety of flora and well-supplied with craftswizards able to supply less poisonously and corrosively direct delivery methods for suffumitories, is not only a dullard with no self-respect but utterly lacks vision. Even _thoroughly unimaginative_ muggles who are more concerned with aroma than mindscaping put lavender and rose petals in their hookahs and cloves in their roll-ups, so wizards have no excuse whatever. I suppose he thought he was slumming when the habit first caught him up, trying muggle drugs, _terribly_ exciting, and surely no risk at all in one with such a mild effect, dear me no.

Yes, Evan, I will freely admit that the pipe that looked like a rabbit with its ears for the stem was moderately clever, albeit quite disturbing when you consider one would be mouthing the rabbit's ears and puffing smoke in and out of its brain. No, Evan, we shall not be returning to buy it for Reggie. No, Evan, that expression will not sway me, and it certainly will not sway Narcissa, who cannot see it.

Let us, Narcissa, prevent him from committing further international absurdities, at least until he sobers up. In pursuit of this modest ambition, we remain,  
Ever yours,  
Lance and Naj

_PS—Spike had the rakia too. He just didn't have much because it was apricot and he said it was too sweet. I'll get him next time. They have other kinds, and some of them are more herby._

_P.P.S.: The Igor-thing is_ vile! _I'm sure it eats bugs. I don't care if that was someone else in the book, I'm sure this one does._

 _Spike says tobacco is an insecticide. That proves it!_ _There are plenty of bees and things, but it's not as if the country's undergoing an infestation. If the man is so dedicated to always having an insecticide on his person that he'll even cling to a pretext that's turning his teeth brown, it's clearly because he so he can, at the shortest possible notice, kill any bugs that turn up and eat them._

P.P.P.S.: No. I will not: do not expect it, the notion is absurd. He is _your_ cousin, _you_ first inflicted him on _me_.

 

* * *

 

Dear Sev,  
How are the mountains? Did you go to Bulgaria or Romania first?

Professor Dumbledore said you were fine, but I don't know if he's right and you're _fine_ or he just means you weren't hurt. _Are_ you all right? I couldn't believe it when I heard! I guess I shouldn't ask if you knew anything,

It's so scary, that something like that could happen right in the middle of the Ministry, in broad daylight, in the middle of a workday, with everyone there and all the security up and everything! Oh, I know, you 'just handled it,' I'm sure, but even if you weren't scared to be in the middle of it, it's still awful that it could happen. I think the Ministry got pretty scared, anyway.

Please tell Evan again that I'm very sorry about misunderstanding him like that. I suppose I ought to say I'm sorry for hitting him, but if I'd been right I wouldn't be sorry about that. What I mean is, I _am_ , but I wouldn't have thought it was the right thing to do if he hadn't _lied_ to me! Why are even your nice friends difficult?

I suppose that includes me, though, being difficult. I'm just so glad we can talk again. I really liked what Evan said about in-laws, Sev. I don't know if it was still hard for you by the time I got married, but I know it must have been at the start, even if I don't know what it was like. I keep thinking I _have_ to talk to Jamie James about leaving you alone—because I swear, Sev, I thought he was doing, I really believed he'd changed more than that. And I keep thinking I have to have it out with him about it, that it's _awful_ of me not to.

Only, I don't know why I'm not. What I mean is, I know I'm afraid to, a bit, because we had that fight for _years_ before we started seeing each other, and it was just, ugh, dreary and frustrating and sneerful and neverending. You can't have that kind of thing with your husband once you've got to understand he's never going to see it your way and you certainly aren't going to agree with him, Sev, you just _can't_. He _knew_ we couldn't live like that, that's why he lied to me, _I_ knew we couldn't live like that. I'd never have started going out with him if I hadn't thought he'd stopped. I can't imagine what it must have been like for you, thinking I knew.

Sorry, gone off-track.

I was saying that I'm a bit afraid to dredge all that up again, but I hope if I were _just_ afraid it wouldn't matter. I mean, he has stopped now, hasn't he? _HASN'T HE?_ If he hasn't, _please_ tell me, don't go all 'oh, I've drunk too much tea, I'll eat when I get home' about it. This is actually my business, Sev, and you're not a Stupid Beef-Brained Man man, and I think we've just proved why people shoving the wrong information at me isn't a good idea, haven't we? (I really am sorry, Evan!)

I know he talked to Dumbledore (James, I mean), and he went all funny and growly after Evan said that, he's been muttering to himself and he keeps telling Harry that family isn't intrinsically horrible no matter what Sirius says. What I mean is, I really think he might be…

I honestly think it might be better left alone, Sev. You know us lion-types, equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes not-pushing works better, although Lord knows it's only sometimes, just ask Remus. But I don't know if I'm being smart about it or just being a coward. You always said Gryffindors never could tell the difference between useless cowardice and good strategy—well, here's me saying this time ( _this time!)_ you're right. I _can't_ tell, I'm too close to it. What do you think?  
Love,  
Lily

 

* * *

 

Lily,  
The mountains are fine. We went to Bulgaria first. I need to talk to some people at Durmstrang. I'm not sure whether it will be necessary, possible, or wise to take more than day-trips to Romania. I suppose one ought to prefer to visit more places, but our lodgings are congenial, the surroundings are more than picturesque enough to keep Evan fruitfully and happily occupied, and the majority of what I ought to accomplish before Hogwarts opens can be done in the footsteps of Orpheus.

You may find this a poetic way of referring to the Rhodopes, but Evan, evidently forgetting that I am possessed of a more alarmist subconscious than he, has been insisting on reading Certain Literature, possibly in order that we might most perfectly offend those of whom I need to ask the very most impertinent and potentially species-threatening questions. I therefore prefer to dwell on other mythologies.

We weren't hurt and we're fine, although there were far too many idiots trying to maim each other by accident to look after all at once and Evan would keep trying to make himself conspicuous helping, so I can't say I enjoyed the experience, no.

We have a rule in Slytherin: Other People's Marriages: Do Not Fool Yourself You Will Ever Understand. I wouldn't dream of telling you how to manage your rhinoceros. You may or may not know him best, but you certainly know best how things work between you.

What do you mean, you think the Ministry got scared?  
SS

 

* * *

 

Dear Lily,  
I think you ought to know that took him more than three hours to write.

If you want him to say 'I forgive you for dating the self-proclaimed thug,' honestly, don't hold your breath. 'Forgive' is not a word he knows. I'm not sure I know it. Do you know what it means, really? What it really means? It's a very odd word, don't you think? He hates words that don't have a meaning you can pin down. You should hear him go off on 'nice,' it's _brilliant!_

You wrote about not-pushing—try it here. If you really do know him at all, you ought to know that apologies and hugs and all that make him dreadfully uncomfortable and he doesn't want to be anywhere near them. He's never going to apologize for doing what he thinks he was right to do, even if he didn't like doing it or didn't like what it did to you, and he doesn't want you to apologize to him. If you apologize, if you're sorry, it means you did the wrong thing and his pain wasn't spent on anything useful. So don't tell him that. Just make him believe you're going to stop hurting him.

And then do it, for Merlin's sake.

I, however, accept your apology in the spirit offered. Another time, if you don't want to be lied to, don't bring an enemy along, yeah?  
_(crumpled up, tossed in bin, retrieved and squirreled away by third party)_

 

* * *

 

Dear Lily,

I think you ought to know that took him more than two hours to write.

Bulgaria is the mother of roses, so I've been getting teased by everyone I'm introduced to. But everything smells wonderful and you can't look out a window without seeing something pretty. If you know much about Durmstrang you'd probably expect that poor Severus and his delicate nose are gagging on the smell of beer and sauerkraut all day long, but I think he may actually be able to make it through the whole month on soup, salads, and kebab.

He's stealing bites and collecting recipes, mind you, but he says it's too hot for everything I'm eating. It's not that hot. And he's certainly acting more comfortable than everyone else, even in those stupid shirt-cuffs that anyone else would be baking in, between the way he never does mind the weather and his not having any insulation anyway. At any rate, he's found a soup that's distressingly like raita for something that calls itself a soup, and it's very sad for the rest of us. Adorable, but very, very sad. It does, as walnuts are a prominent ingredient, afford me the pleasure of remarking on how little wonder it is when he does something especially nutty, but his eyebrows haven't quite twitched off his face yet. I live in breathless anticipation.

Tell me, is it a woman thing, thinking a fellow will not only want to change who he is but also be able to, because of how he feels about someone? See, my cousin Narcissa thought she could make her husband a bit less self-conscious and silly, and good luck to her say I, and that's only a self-esteem thing, not something he's ever been willfully set on. That is to say, he is quite attached to his demon-birds, and they are quite silly, but he certainly doesn't want to always look over-polished, and I really don't think she's going to be able to do anything about it, considering he's a grown wizard set in his character, do you? If you're not prepared to live with all of who a person is, don't live with him, that's what I think, but of course you can't tell Narcissa anything. I blame Celestina Warbeck.

But I digress.

I shouldn't worry overmuch about Severus being traumatized by the stupidity in the Portkey Office, if that's what you were getting at. Being Severus, he was mostly annoyed, once he'd finished being pinpoint-focused and magnificent. He's been writing angry letters to Dumbledore about what 'had by-God-better' be included in the DADA curriculum, since Severus wasn't hired to enact it himself. Sadly, these are less well-peppered with references to his recent interviews with Durmstrang professors and ex-professors than good strategy would suggest. You should see if Dumbledore will let you read one of his replies before he sends it out next time—they're hysterical. By which I mean… you know that beyond-words-furious frustrated teakettle noise…?

To answer your question, all his friends are difficult because he has doesn't have the patience to be friends with anyone simple enough to think we live in simple times with simple answers to easy questions.

Speaking of which—

What do you mean, you think the Ministry got scared?  
Regards,  
E. Rosier.

 

* * *

 

Ev,  
You're not subtle.

 

* * *

 

Spike-my-Spike  
It's very wrong of you to read other people's mail, and if you keep making other people's national breakfast drinks interesting and more delicious than they're meant to be when they actually have 'boring' in the name, I'm dreadfully afraid we may find out what death-by-elf looks like one of these days. Why don't you join me when you're done with Professor Daskalov? I should be done with Polzin in time to get to Devil's Bridge by sunset. I think it's going to keep on quite warm tonight, don't you?  
Ev

 

* * *

 

Ev,  
NOT. SUBTLE.

Yes, fine, but _you_ can do the explaining if questions are raised about the room not needing tidying.

 

* * *

 

Dear Sev  
Thanks for all the really helpful advice, everyone's fine, thanks for asking.

I don't know why you've both gone over all emphatic and pressing about it, they're just being a bit extra-cautious about security. What would you expect?

Your bloke's a bit interfering, isn't he?  
Love, Lily

  
PS: Sorry if I'm a bit short. You think you know about babies being fussy sometimes, but you don't _really_ know till it happens.

 

* * *

 

Lily,  
Not as a rule, he's not.  
_I_ didn't tell you to have one.  
SS

  
P.S.: I don't wish to encourage Narcissesque hypochondria-by-proxy, but if he wasn't fussy before and is all of a sudden, a check-up would not be an unreasonable precaution. Colic's not unusual even this early. If he's just hungry all the time… they grow.

 

* * *

  
 

[Note attached to a [wicker basket of ripe raspberries](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fthumbs.dreamstime.com%2Ft%2Fraspberry-wicker-basket-isolated-white-background-56131481.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dreamstime.com%2Fstock-photo-raspberry-basket-holding-hands-garden-background-fresh-ripe-image56869994&docid=FXwu8ZTq9JFa9M&tbnid=riEhCd6f7gi-vM%3A&w=203&h=160&itg=1&bih=818&biw=997&ved=0ahUKEwjO0dW0v7fNAhUBQyYKHQwVAsoQMwiSASgJMAk&iact=mrc&uact=8)]

  
For Sev with just ever-so-many loads of love,  
Lily  
PS: Colic. They gave me a small-dose digestive potion for him, though I'm sure you don't want to know how it's delivered.

 

* * *

 

GODDAMNIT, WOMAN, MY EYES!  
S

 

* * *

 

Evan,  
What in Salazar's name did you say to Polkin? You were supposed to encourage him to work with Apostolis Avery.  
L. Mfy

* * *

 

Dear Lucius,  
I did. Very complimentary. Open trade relations so vital to the movement of a free society and all that. What's got you all in a twist?  
Evan

 

* * *

 

Evan,  
They were getting on very well and Avery was sure they were at most two meetings away from securing his support on a measure for a significant relaxation on restrictions on trading for parts of _all_ beings classified as Beasts in either country concerned. Now he's gone over all chilly and he's pulling out all sorts of bylaws and the sorts of concessions he's demanding are not the sort you ask for if you truly want to make a deal.  
L. Mfy

* * *

 

Dear Lucius,  
Clearly he didn't like my waistcoat, then.

Look, old thing, I don't see why you want to blame _me_ because he's gone over all virtuous. From the sound of it, I'd say his superiors got into his briefcase and told him he's on probation. And he _asked_ to be painted rosacea and all, so don't go telling me I queered your deal on that count either, thank you kindly.

Spike says hullo and 'please divest yourself at once of the delusion that the universe is controllable,' and also says 'try to read Draco something containing more nouns and verbs than numbers on occasion, will you.'  
Love to Cissa and the tadpole.  
Evan

 

* * *

 

Severus,  
Does your demented inamorato understand that his successes and failures have real-world consequences?  
Lucius

 

* * *

 

Luke,  
Your terminology is repellant, and I shan't even try to address the yawning maw of the question of its accuracy.

Of course _Evan_ understands that. Do _you_ understand that he isn't maneuvering in a vacuum? If even I am aware that all governments are made up of hundreds of self-directed and self-centeredly-motivated moving parts, I am aghast if you're not, and I know Others are. Sometimes it works in one's favor and sometimes against. You _know_ plans never survive first contact with the target, or what are contingencies for?

Finding children's books is not hard, Lucius. You floo to Diagon Alley. You walk into Flourish & Blotts. You tell the poor harassed sod behind the desk, "My first child is two months old. I need drivel with soft bits that can be drooled on and chewed and if possible makes noises. Help me, O-Beloved Shopkeep, you're my only hope."  
SS

 

* * *

 

Severus,  
I showed the shopgirl that bit of your letter and then I had to pay for the crystal case behind her when she laughed so hard she broke it, thanks awfully.  
Yours in some puzzlement,  
Lucius

 

* * *

 

Luke,  
I'm to believe you're a charmless numbskull who's incapable of a simple reparo, then? (Which is to say that I consider you to have made this delightful narrative up out of whole cloth in order to stiff me for a _glass_ case _you_ broke with your ridiculous poncy walking stick when you turned around too quickly out of fear someone you know would see you buying a book with a fuzzy bunny on the cover.)  
SS

 

* * *

 

Severus,  
If it will get me out of reading My Pretty Pegasus and Dippy The Dragon Is Hungry more than once a day once you're back, I beg you on both knees to believe that very thing.  
Lucius

 

* * *

 

Luke,  
It will not.  
Sincerely,  
Reality

 

* * *

 

Mam,  
Would you please take some workable clay samples from the thicket by the Pendle—you know the one—and from that dip by the bluebell wood in the Bowden and owl them to Narcissa? At least half a pound from each, call it 12℥ to be on the safe side if possible. Alacrity would be deeply appreciated.  
S

 

* * *

 

Naj, darling,  
Why on earth am I receiving wet lumps of earth from your mother and a sweet-shop?  
Cerberus

 

* * *

 

Very,  
I was tempted to deliver the bricks to your princess in person, just to see her face. Itching your feet off, are you? I told you to take a tub of Verily In Soothe. Trust you to come up with something odd. Let me know if it works.  
E. Snape

 

* * *

 

Narcissa,  
Because you have stolen control of my shoe-making process. I'd like you to give them to your cobbler, please, and have him make me four sets of insoles—enchanted to be flexible and durable and all that, and if he knows how to infuse them with magic from the nearest ley line or node I'll make him a bottle of any garden wine, mead, or cider he likes. Feel free to up the number a bit if he badly needs persuading, though I do expect to be quite busy on my return. One set made of clay from each sample, and one an amalgam. If you won't send me the bill, send it to Evan and we'll pretend I haven't stolen it or got him a dreadful new eyesore of an easel or something. (The wood-workers here are quite remarkable. Many use traditional tools like knives and transfiguration, but some also do a sort of hive-mind will-controlling spell on termites. The detail this method permits is astonishing.)  
Naj

 

* * *

 

Mam,  
I took two tubs, and I've nearly gone through them already. They won't let me brew in the inn, and there are little fairy-like beings that work for their Ministry that converge and start scolding and wielding pins if you try to light a fire outside in the wizarding areas where, one might have assumed, one would only be looked at so oddly for using a cauldron. Evidently they're not over the war.

(If their last war was even what Binns has deigned to notify us about; I have the impression that if I were to properly explain that our language uses one word to express the political state of not-at-war and the emotion of tranquility, I should get quite bored waiting for the laughter to subside.)  
No such firestorms at home, I trust?  
S

 

* * *

 

Very,  
Suppose you manage your young idiot and let me manage mine.  
Mam

 

* * *

 

Mam,  
Suppose you consider that I mean what I say on occasion. I think you're wise to stay off the Prophet's subscription list and eschew other hallmarks of wizarding citizenship, for what that's worth, but I'd like to ask Lily to start sending you a copy. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's not always protection.

(Not but what the venerable rag only helps so much. Their articles are more than half spin which is all garbage, but at least after reading it you _know that things have happened.)  
_ S

  
P.S.: Note that I am _not_ asking you whether by 'your young idiot' you mean myself or your husband. I do not ask you to tell me, as I do not wish to know. Do not consider this hypocrisy: ignorance is no protection from curses or violence, but it _can_ be a protection from horror-stricken insanity.

 

* * *

 

My dear boy,  
I've just had the most delightful visit from one of my old Gryffindors. I believe you know Miss Prince as was, although I don't think she will have mentioned that she was coming to see me. What a pleasure it is to sit with my alumni and recall the sunny days of yore! Things were so different then, a freer, gentler era, and one's memory cannot help but be tinged with the golden glow of fading recollections. Why, before this afternoon I can't remember the last time anyone shattered my spectacles with a bag of Gobstones. Why the dear girl should imagine me responsible for Ministry security I can't imagine, can you?

Regardless, it was a great pleasure to see her again and have a chance to catch up. It's so reassuring to the feelings of a teacher or parent to hear about important things in our children's lives from them directly and in a timely manner, as no doubt you'll discover before long.

On which subject, my boy, which is to say, that of your imminent discovery of the joys of academia, I remain positively afire to hear the results of these interviews which are the purported purpose of your summer sabbatical, and shall send your newest suggestions for Gawain Robard's syllabus to join their brethren on the mountainous pile of commentary on the DADA position one always does receive over the summer.

In trust you both are taking some time from this extensive brainstorming to enjoy the delights of the Balkans,  
I remain, yours affectionately,  
Albus Dumbledore

 

* * *

 

Professor,  
I suppose it is, in the dignified and storied halls of 'academia,' as la belle Flamelle would say, of all things the most dreadful to tell one's employer to blow it out his ear. I inquire as a mere matter of hypothetical interest.  
S. Snape

 

* * *

 

My dear boy,  
Would one, hypothetically, be offering his employer, perhaps, a box of that delightful lavender-laced snuff sold at the apothecary outside Sofia run by the charming zmey? As I recall, it was quite strong enough to feel as if one was, indeed, sneezing it out one's ears. I'm afraid I never cared for that sort of thing myself—it's quite inadvisable unless clean-shaven, you know—but no doubt Horace would enjoy a sample.  
Warmest regards,  
Albus Dumbledore

 

* * *

 

Professor,  
Since as an educator and a former Gryffindor you may be presumed to value clarity and forthrightness in your communications, I shall rephrase:

To he who would say to me that it is within his purview to instruct me in how I speak with my mother I say: tie your beard in a knot and throw it over your shoulder. You're damned lucky she stopped at breaking your glasses, O Supreme Mugwump.

And you'll have my report on my interviews when I've finished them and compiled them into something coherent. Which is to say: most likely in person.  
Very sincerely,  
S. Snape.

 

* * *

 

My dear boy,  
I have attempted the manner of wearing my beard you suggested and received several compliments! I must say, however, that it may have to be saved for formal occasions—I used a Celtic knot, of course, as a simpler one would not have gone well with my robes at all, and it was perhaps too time-consuming a style to adopt on an everyday basis. I do look forward to discussing the effect with your great friend, however, as I do other matters with your good self.  
Affectionately yours,  
Albus Dumbledore

 _attached:_  
**Evan—  
Why is everyone I know crazy?**

 

* * *

 

 _Couldn't tell you for sure, Spike, but you might want to think about whether there's a common denominator involved._ _Have_ _you finished talking cauldron bottoms yet? I have the apparition coordinates for Silistar Beach if you can come rescue me from this utter bore._

_Ev_

 

* * *

 

Mein Troglodyte,  
STANDARDIZATION IN CAULDRON CONSTRUCTION MINIMIZES EXPLOSIONS.

 

* * *

 

Best-beloved foghorn,  
Does it really? I don't suppose it's anything to do with heat distribution, is it? No, no, couldn't possibly be, I can't imagine what or who lied to me that heat distribution was why, over and over repeatedly twelve times a month or so for two years straight. You'd better come tell me all about it, I am agog for the truth of this obscure and not at all blindingly common-sensicle question which has always been so frightfully important to my work as a painter. Bring food or I'll buy starchy, starchy pies.  
Ev

  
P.S.: if you plan to be enough of a porcupine to _really_ talk cauldron bottoms at me and don't also bring a very nice bottle, I will bite you so much the bug-eater will ask you questions about it tomorrow, or at least look at you funny and try to kill me with his eyes again. On your face will I gorge, and then you will have no grouchy DF-leg to stand on when I 'call you ridiculous names,' because the adjective will have been proven by your cherished Etymology of whom I am wildly jealous. Feel free to test me if you think I can't distract you long enough!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : Evan is somewhat mistaken in his etymology: ('gorgeous' is related to 'gorge' only in that necklaces, gorgets and eating all have to do with throats, those narrow passages which are the part of the body around which a beautiful and fashionable ornament would be hung to be displayed most prominently.  
> He is probably not going to be corrected this time. It would be so difficult to correct him without at least tacitly acknowledging that he had been this embarrassing in the first place. If he were called on it, his reaction would probably be less about admitting his error than about what he would do with Severus's neck if he were allowed to paint it.
> 
> Zmeys are dragon-men (definitely men). The Bulgarian zmey has to be googled with the term 'Zmey Bulgaria' because other Slavic zmeys are more classical dragons. Bulgarian zmeys are more sort of friendlyish golden-scaled winged men with tails who like their wine, their milk, and their white bread, please, they aren't peasants, they're village-protectors, they deserve the _good_ bread.
> 
> There has been, in the history of HPverse, at least one effort in at least one country to get muggles classified as 'beasts.' It would be nice to think that Wizarding Britain is the _most_ messed up and magically-traditionally-psychotic magical nation there is in that 'verse, but let's not kid ourselves: the last Dark Lord didn't even _try_ there.


	20. Diagon Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A government in fear of terrorism is a sadly predictable animal, but _noblesse oblige_ doesn't have to be a condescension from atop a high horse, and someday there will be ice cream in Diagon.
> 
> —Oh, and btw? Wizards are not interested in your muggle sex-and-gender norms. (Except the wizards who are trying reallllyyy hard to gently accommodate your tiny muggle brain.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : See summary. Also: weightism, dysmorphia, profiling, sex-and-gender normalizing, sports.
> 
>  **Notes** : Happy fourth, those who care!
> 
> And for those of you who are embarking on a political exodus of your own... it is legitimately possible that this example of what happens when enough people feel they have to make a shock vote to be taken seriously by established institutions could be a big part of what leaves the world rocky and difficult instead of exploded and dead. Assuming that happens, which... Nate Silver will tell you that 22% _is not 0%._ So for those of you who are unhappy about what's going to happen... there's that, maybe? And to all of you, best wishes and best of luck.
> 
> (Please wish us luck, too. Do we ever need it.)

 Regulus actually put his hands over his eyes. Realizing that this wasn’t quite going to get him the blissful ignorance he wanted, he tried to stretch them over his ears, too. He got his thumbs over his earholes, and pressed the little triangular cartalige-y bit in front down, but it wasn’t as good as a nice pair of palmy earmuffs. Only, if he took his fingers away from his eyes, the smirk would still be there.

He had the _worst_ friends. _Ever_.

“Wilkes,” he hissed, trying for a good Spikey hiss and suspecting he mostly came off wet-cat, “I do not need to know what your lumpy gerbil of a boyfriend calls you in bed!”

“It’s sweet!” Wilkes insisted, which he could unfortunately hear because the thumbs-and-cartilage thing just didn’t work very well.

“That doesn’t make me want to hear it!” he insisted.

“Madam Fortescue,” Wilkes appealed to their hostess, who was passing with a tray of dirty plates from someone else’s table. The pot of what must have been firewhiskey-flavored clotted cream steamed half-full against her tea tray, a cheerful, comforting black-cherry red with gold washed through it. The effect was very Gryffie, but she’d probably only colored her china in tribute to firewhiskey and to fight the grizzly London grey sky. It wasn’t always the same.

Reg tried not to look too longingly at it. He’d settled for the clover-y tea and dandelion leaf sandwiches because Gildy had told him he was looking ‘almost as yellow as poor old Snape.’ Which he absolutely wasn’t, but he _was_ looking a bit pale, and feeling a bit blue. His mother and Bella had both been on his back a bit about not getting out enough (they had quite different ideas about where he ought to be instead) while Dad was trying to teach him some things about dealing with Gringotts that… well, Reg supposed Binns _might_ have covered it.

The problem with being in a rotation on the History of Magic note-taking front was that you were at a risk of Thor Rowle being the note-taker on a day it really should have fallen to Rabastan. Or of Gilderoy taking notes on a day when Binns had covered anything important whatsoever.

And then the problem with having Spike explain the notes to you was, he’d realized in startlement some years later after watching Spike and Lucius have a flaming row over Gringotts was even a good idea for wizards, that Spike had been _utterly clueless_ about money at school.

Well, about finances. Not about the book-money he’d found ways to get for himself, not for personal-accounting sort of things. But as for the way money moved? Reg didn’t think Spike understood it even now, and Lucius and Aunt Callisto had both sat him down repeatedly.

Which, as Regulus had tried to explain to his mother (not to Bella, who wasn’t interested in the Black finances anymore), meant that it was actually quite _important_ for Reg to spend as much time as Dad thought he needed tucked up together in the study. And it was a much more time-sensitive sort of important than it was for him to go spend time with witches he either didn’t know or who had, at school, ignored him, treated him like a pet, treated him like a slimy Slytherin his wonderful brother hated, or been mostly interested in his surname.

She didn’t concede this, and Bella didn’t concede that he wasn’t going to be able to do the kinds of Ministry-wrangling that Voldemort clearly didn’t even really expect him to be any good at if he didn’t have a solid base in… well, in where he stood and how things worked. Bella kept saying he was too timid and needed to just plunge in.

It was all very stress-making, and while Reg definitely wasn’t _yellow,_ he was prepared to concede that it might all have been making his skin a bit duller than he had to put up with. So: red clover tisane with burdock and cinnamon, and dandelion-leaf sandwiches, and no sugar in the tea because Wilkes would have laughed at him and he hadn’t felt it was worth it today. Only now he was sorry, and the firewhiskey clotted cream looked warm and, er, well, creamy, and comforting.

He was still fantasizing about snatching the half-eaten pot off Madam Fortescue’s tray when Wilkes made the woman agree that it was (ugh) _darling_ of Pettigrew to call Wilkes Lucrezia. He only hoped Madam Fortescue didn’t know that the lump called Wilkes Lucy in public, just like everyone else who didn’t know better than to think she was a cute girl who could be called sweet little names like Lucy without making Spike look politely incredulous and disinterestedly sorry for your doomed stupidity.

He poked glumly at his sandwiches while Wilkes and Madam Fortescue chatted, and then looked up when he felt eyes on him. It was a bit like having Spike make decisions for him from a distance, only not so heavy-blanket-like.

When he did look up, it was just in time to see the Fortescue girl plop a cinnamon scone and a tasting pot of a slightly beige clotted cream with brown specks on his plate. “You don’t want _that,_ ” she nodded at his sandwiches with a little chin-point.

“Er… not really,” Reg confessed, trying not to look too abashed in front of the sixteen-year-old. “But I shouldn’t…”

She had sort of coppery eyes—or maybe he meant cidery, or toffee-colored—that were judging him for his choices.

“I’ve been inside too much and thought I could use a skin-tonic,” he said lamely.

“It’s too clammy out for that,” she told him definitely. “You want something warm and chewy.”

Wilkes was watching them with interest, and now she was judging him for his choices, too. In advance. With sparkly glee-eyes.

“I suppose I do,” he gave up, and took a bite of dubious cream and scone. Surprised, he said, “This is good!”

“Honey and nutmeg,” the girl said smugly, swinging her ankles between the legs of the chair she’d pulled over. “See, mum? I told you we should be doing hot chocolate today.”

“It’s _August,_ dear,” Madam Fortescue said with a long-suffering share-my-pain look at Reg. “We wouldn’t sell enough to make it worthwhile in summer, even on a nasty day like today.”

“If we—” the girl started mulishly. Reg didn’t know what she was going to say, but he could tell it was going to end in some variant of _like I wanted_ or _I told you so._

“I’m sure we don’t need to bore the customers, dear,” Madam Fortesque said repressively.

“I’m not bored,” Wilkes put in brightly.

“We have a billiwig in our bonnet about being more like a bakery,” Madam Fortescue explained wearily. “There isn’t _room_ in the back for an oven.”

Wilkes eyed her own scones suspiciously.

“You don’t make scones in an oven!” The girl sounded offended, in the way that, Reg was sure, meant that plenty of people did make scones in an oven and were Very Wrong. Whether or not there was any real problem with it. At least, that’s what that tone would have meant on Spike or Narcissa or Lucius. “We have a stone counter.”

Apparently, that was meant to explain everything.

Apparently, her mother also thought it explained everything.

Regulus sighed a little to himself. He was, of course, perfectly accustomed to ‘explanations’ from people who assumed everyone knew what they knew and were as smart as they were. You had to either clarify life to them repeatedly or give in on caring whether you could actually follow them. Evan kept encouraging him to do the first, for Severus’s good as much as his own, but it was gloomy and grey and clammy out and it wouldn’t be polite with someone he didn’t know so well.

“It’s the traditional way, to cook them on a hot stone,” the girl said.

Reg blinked at her, surprised. She’d said it straight to him, not to Wilkes or to them both. She must have seen him looking lost. “It’s Flora, isn’t it?” he asked. “In Hufflepuff?”

“That’s right,” said Madam Fortescue.

“ _Florean,_ ” the girl said crossly. But the crossness was for her mother, not for Reg.

“Not while you’re still in school, dear,” Madam Fortescue said wearily.

Possibly due to seeing Reg (and now Wilkes) look lost again, Flora-or-Florean explained, “I’m taking Amborella when I graduate.”

Wilkes looked interested. Reg couldn’t tell whether she actually was; Wilkes was a _really good_ gossip. In some ways he thought she was better than Narcissa, although Narcissa was _safer_ as long as she liked you. They were both worlds better than the stories he’d heard about Bertha Jorkins, who’d had a reputation for being pushily curious with no discretion, although Reg didn’t know the witch himself except from wincing House legend. “Have you tried it before?”

She got an eager nod. “I got to stay under for almost all summer this year.”

“A week for every OWL she got,” Madam Fortescue told Reg fondly, even though it’d been Wilkes who’d asked. “It doesn’t have much of a shelf life and it’s a bit dear, so we can’t usually let her have that long, but she deserved it. She did so well I might have let her stay Florean all summer, but we agreed she needed to get used to her center of balance again before hopping on one of those ancient school brooms.”

“I don’t see why I couldn’t just stay under,” Florean said mutinously.

“It’s probably because Hogwarts was built and bespelled before anyone could get to Melanesia for amborella flowers,” Reg said, a little wearily. He then had to explain, “Our friend Snape will tell you more about potions than you ever thought _anyone_ would want to know, if you give him half a chance.”

“A _quarter_ of a chance,” Wilkes agreed, rolling her eyes. “A _hundredth._ And not just potions. You weren’t in our year, Black; you think you know but you don’t.”

“What does when Hogwarts was built have to do with it?” Florean asked, half grumpy and half keenly interested.

“I’m just guessing,” Reg explained, trying not to shrink back under copper-bright eyes.

“I expect he’s right, though,” Wilkes told Florean. “No one _ever_ gets to change who their roommates are once they’ve been Sorted and settled.” Regretfully, she finished, “The stairways won’t let boys into the girls’ dorms. Sprout might have let you if you’d been born a boy; she’s always seemed a quite reasonable sort to me; but she might not be able to, this way.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Reg asked Madam Fortescue diffidently, and not because he thought Wilkes needed a rescue from the slightly scandalized look the older witch was giving her. He wasn’t sure whether Wilkes never noticed scandalized looks or kept a victorious tally of them, but either way, she didn’t rescuing. “What’s wrong with just using Florean for a name regardless?”

“Mum thinks it would be too hard to explain to my Muggleborn friends,” Florean said, eyes rolling expressively.

Reg frowned. “They agreed to go to Hogwarts,” he said, a little stiffly, to the teapot. “Nobody should _stop being a wizard_ just because some people don’t bother to find out we’re not the same as muggles.”

Wilkes kicked his foot under the table, hard. He blinked at her, and she said, “Even Cissa doesn’t rag on Lily Potter _out loud in front of Snape,_ Black.”

Reg had to admit it was a fair kick. “Okay,” he agreed. “Sorry for criticizing your friends, Florean. I still say ‘they agreed to go to a wizarding school,’ though. Besides,” he turned to Madam Fortescue, “It’s not as if Florean’s a name like Brutus. It’s more _French_ than anything, isn’t it? …Er, isn’t it?” he asked uncertainly, because the older witch was regarding him with the kind of Interested Evaluating Look he would have backed away from at any party, at speed.

He checked with Wilkes, who was looking highly amused with him and deeply disiniclined to be helpful, and slid a cautious look at Florean, who was a bit too bright-eyed and kneazle-smiling for his entire comfort. Helplessly, he tried, “No?”

“I’m not sure what the Headmaster would think of it,” Madam Fortescue said with an air of generously taking pity on him.

“Is it his business, if you’re not trying to actually change school records?” Reg asked, feeling his eyebrows slide up a bit. Voldemort’s scorn about anyone felt less relevant to him these days, but Dumbledore hadn’t been particularly well thought of in the Slytherin Common Room, either. He was pleasant enough when you were talking to him, but he’d never been any help whatever. To anyone. The poor old Tartan had been completely in over her head doing his old jobs, and as far as anyone could tell Dumbledore had never even given her a _hint_. “Teachers call everyone by their surnames anyway.”

“Besides, the old bumblebee’s not _so_ bad,” Wilkes put in. “He’s got a sense of humor, at least. He never minds when anyone makes fun of him as long as it isn’t,” she waved a hand.

“Disrespectful?” Madam Fortescue asked, her brow crinkling like a witch who’d never heard about Narcissa’s poetry reading.

“Nasty,” Wilkes decided. “There are even some kinds of disrespectful he doesn’t mind. That friend we mentioned used to _howl_ at him sometimes. And Snape can _yell_ when he thinks you’re wrong, believe _me_.”

“Talk to the Sprout if you’re worried about it,” Reg suggested to Florean.

Wilkes glittered evil merriment. “And if she gives you any grief, owl me. I know her niece.”

“I’m sure she won’t,” Reg said reproachfully. “Professor Sprout is a _sane person._ ”

“Your best friends are Bast Lestrange, Gildyteeth Look-at-me, and Spike Snape,” Wilkes ribbed him with a tilty smile. “How would you recognize one?”

Reg stuck out his tongue at her before remembering where he was. It wasn’t true, anyway; he had plenty of sane friends, like Becca Goldstein and Marielle Selwyn, even if you didn’t count his cousins. Then he did remember. Sheepishly, he uttered, “Er.”

“I think you’d better kick the kitten out before he _really_ embarrasses himself,” Wilkes told the Fortescues wickedly, rising. Reg reached for his moneybag reluctantly; he’d finished his scone and was not desperately attached to what he’d actually ordered, but it looked so ugly and raw outside. “Stop looking like the wet week it is, Giraffe, you promised you’d walk me as far as Amanuensis,” she ordered amiably.

“Make sure to come back before September,” Florean told him with a bright smile. “You can help me convince Mum we should try to have ice cream by next summer. I’m trying out loads of flavors for it in the clotted cream.”

“I expect I will,” he agreed, and nodded at the dregs of honey and nutmeg cream. “That was quite good.”

Florean actually beamed up at him, which was odd. But you had to expect a complete lack of public face when you were talking to Hufflepuffs. And it was a good smile. Not as pretty as Gildy’s, obviously, but at least it seemed to be sharing _some_ part of Reg’s planet and reality.

“Lovely tea,” Wilkes said as they walked out into the grey, skirting the buildings closely to stay under the brightly colored Diagon awnings and their waterproofing spells. Diagon was better at bad weather than Hogsmeade; the awnings all connected up, so as long as you stayed near the buildings you didn’t even have to take out your wand to stay dry. “I’ll chaperone you anytime you like, Pussyfoot.”

Reg blinked at her in confusion, but she just laughed at him and yanked him down by the ear to ruffle his hair. She wouldn’t even have been able to reach that if she hadn’t been wearing terrifying shoes, so he felt obliged to let her.

“So,” she went on, rather to his relief, “did you know your brother’s fighting with his pet dishrag, then?”

“Er… was I supposed to?”

“Petey won’t tell me what it’s about, exactly,” she went on blithely, “ _yet._ I think ol’ Frivolous is just making a pest of himself, but it doesn’t sound much as if Loopy’s planning to let him off the hook anytime soon.”

“Sirius has a name, Wilkes,” he sighed.

“So does Severus,” she replied, sharp as broken phials for just a moment. “And while they’re both annoying busybodies with the attention span of rabid chipmunks, only one of them says he’s ours and we’re his.”

One of Reg’s shoulders hunched, miserably.

She didn’t pat him or anything like that, but she wasn’t snapping anymore when she said airily, “I just thought you’d like to know.”

“You just thought _who’d_ like to know?” he asked, sighing.

She considered. “Probably Cissa. She can tell Malfoy herself.”

“I don’t know why you don’t just—”

“Sure you do, Giraffe,” she contradicted him cheerfully. “All Peter’s friends are expert stalkers. Just because _he_ doesn’t think they’ve found out he’s dating a Slytherin yet doesn’t mean I should go and be conspicuously friendly with Malfoys. Malfoy makes people think he’s up to something just by saying hullo; he’s worse than Snape.”

“Should you be conspicuously friendly with me, then?” he asked tentatively.

He got back one of the most cynical smiles he’d ever seen off of Spike’s face. “Oh, but your brother thinks you’re ‘salvageable,’” she told him.

“That’s what Pettigrew says, is it?” Reg bristled, both his shoulders hunching now.

“He does, but Cissa always thought so, too,” she shrugged. “He’s _always_ thought if he could get you away from Snape and Bellatrix he could, I don’t know, make you into a more bullyable version of him. Or something like that.”

Reg frowned, but not in annoyance, or not mostly. Spike was _away_ for a few weeks, it occurred to him. But then again, actually _talking_ to Sirius… never went well.

“How long did you say the crazy-eyes are away for?” Wilkes asked, not pretending very hard that it was apropos of nothing.

“I didn’t,” Reg scowled at her, “and I’m sure I don’t know who you could possibly mean.”

She patted his arm unsympathetically.

He left her with the stationer as promised, and wandered off in the direction of Gringotts. It was too raw a day out to expose himself to goblins sneering at him from their high chairs at their high marble counters, even if Granddad would probably have liked him to drop in and make sure nothing strange had happened to the interest rates while he was in the Alley.

Gringotts was, however, next to the quidditch supply store. It was always nice to get birthday shopping out of the way, and October wasn’t so very far off anymore.

Because he tried to be a good friend, the first thing Reg did (after inhaling the comfortable smells of charmed leather and potion-soaked ashwood) was to make a beeline for the Silver Arrow on display and ask the floorwizard a lot of loud, admiring questions about its construction. He didn’t think Severus actually got any royalties when the things were sold (because Spike had a combination of stiff-necked pride and instinctive good manners, when he wasn’t narked off or desperate and it didn’t involve proving he was more right than everyone about potions, that made him really unbelievably pathetic at the grindelow pond that was business), but he’d still appreciate Reg stirring up business for a broom his work had gone into.

He got a test ride out of it, too. There were always kids around even in the first half of August—not just locals but kids whose parents wanted to avoid the teeming mobs of the last two weeks. You could, if you wanted and were old enough or your parents would let you, tell the floorwizard to turn on the lights on under the strip of green oil and purple water embedded in the walls (the Quality Quidditch people having decided that wearing Wembley Wyvern colors would start fewer fights in their Diagon location than even the the red and white of the national team, since plenty of Irish kids did go to Hogwarts), and then kids would swarm up to the roof with you to throw bludgers at you while you tried your broom out.

Not actual bludgers, of course; the QQ owners wouldn’t have risked unsold or display brooms around actual loose bludgers any more than they would have allowed two fliers at once. But the beanbags were enchanted to take a good few swings at anyone in the arena before falling, and they were big enough to sting and leave a big red spot, or even bruise a bag of bones like Spike.

Reg told himself he was just being nice to the kids, but actually he had a great time, ducking and weaving and rolling and catching beanbags. When he started to feel that the bludger-bags were being thrown at him with a bit less force, he landed and wrote up a few IOUs for his three best assailants to show at Gambol and Japes and Sugarplum’s—for a cream tea for two at Fortescue’s rather than a set amount, in the case of the probably-a-fifth-or-sixth-year who’d clearly been showing off for her girlfriend.

He didn’t examine why he was sending business to Fortescue’s rather than Madam Puddifoot’s in Hogsmeade, or the Three Broomsticks. The witches were clearly old enough to be allowed Hogsmeade visits, but he told himself it was nicer to get your prize on the day you’d won.

The floorwizard tried to get him to _buy_ the wretched thing, of course—well, it wasn’t really wretched, it was an excellent broom. Reg had to explain that he wasn’t broomshopping today and he already had one; he was just friends with a bloke who’d helped in the design and had thought it would be nice to show it off.

The floorwizard got a knowing, conspiratorial look, and asked if he’d like to buy a button or some Merrymen gear, if he wanted to help advertise for his friend.

Reg did not buy a button. It wasn’t even a tasteful button. There was nothing tasteful about a broom handle with a lot of grey arrows coming out of the end where the bristles should be, in his opinion. And no matter what the floorwizard said, it did _not_ bring out his eyes.

He did, however, pick up a set of Swivenhodge balls and racquets in Wimborne colors with cuddly-looking… the iconic mascot looked, on these, more like a honeybee than a wasp, and a honeybee in desperate need of a lovely post-prandial nap, at that. It was enough of a surprise that they had gear for games that weren’t Quidditch in Quidditch colors that he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth—especially while he was buying gifts.

He’d let Lucius buy the boy a toy broom himself, when Narcissa decided Draco was old enough, even if that was a traditional present for babies who, in Reg’s admittedly uneducated opinion, were far too young to be on one. If he knew Lucius, though, the man was going to be at a complete loss for things to do with Draco until the boy was old enough to take care of his own Abraxan. A practical suggestion ought to make a good birthday present, and since the balls were just stuffed with fluff soaked in billiwig extract, Narcissa wouldn’t take Reg’s head off for giving Lucius a suggestion she’d think was dangerous for a baby.

Not but what Reg thought Lucius would go through several balls ‘practicing in anticipation so he could train Draco’s hand and eye well to prepare for Quidditch’ long before she let him teach Draco how to use the racquets. Still, they were nice racquets, two big ones with mean-looking wasps (in case she wanted to join in even though she wasn’t much for sport. Or, more likely, for when Lucius dragged Reg or Severus or even Evan in to play), and one toddler-sized one with the stoned honeybee on.

On the way to the counter, Reg turned around and bought a Wembley racket and a Nottingham one, too. Evan would probably be perfectly happy waving gold and black stripes around, and would probably think very soppy things about blonds and black-haired blokes while he did it, knowing Evan. _He_ however, did not want to play with a Wimborne racquet.

Severus wouldn’t admit to caring what racquet he played with. He also wasn’t going to want to play. Spike was always a wet blanket about playing anything unless you got him to feel competitive or he thought you were in trouble. He wasn’t going to think Draco was in trouble because of fluffballs, so defending his team’s reputation was probably the only way to draw him in without Lucius having to push past hours of grumbling and this-is-stupid.

The wizard behind the counter was Bryn Llewelyn, which would have surprised Reg more Reg if he hadn’t made a practice of watching the other House teams try out at school.

He’d never gone alone, but he might as well have for all the good it’d done him. Evan and Severus _had_ been paying attention really, but Evan had always gotten away with it by pretending to be asleep, and Severus had skipped the Gryffindor tryouts and brought books and homework to all the rest—and actually read them. Narcissa had clearly been there just to show willing, while Wilkes had only been technically accompanying them, her attention being very much on the prospective players, and had never hesitated to abandon the rest of them as soon as someone noticed that a big-eyed girl who looked like a china doll was cheering them with all the enthusiasm of a rabid ferret. Gilderoy had been just as bad.

Reg hadn’t encouraged any of his other yearmates to come, because Thor was Quidditch-happy in the way that tended to make problems when he encountered other teams that weren’t his, and the one time Bast had come he got them all summarily thrown out for hexing the Bludgers (he’d tried the brooms first, but the brooms hadn’t noticed). Becca couldn’t have cared less if someone had paid her not to, Selwyn couldn’t stop shouting advice at the prospective Beaters, and the company of the Carrows was just not fun for Reg.

So he hadn’t had very good company to distract him from the actual tryouts (Narcissa had usually brought her homework, too), and remembered quite a lot from them. One of the things he remembered was that Bryn had all the Quidditch-passion you’d have expected from a great-great-whatever of Dangerous Dai, and none of the talent. He’d tried out for the Gryffindor team four years running.

Reg had wondered at the time what percentage of his enthusiasm had been made of his family’s expectations, especially since his big sister had won trophies before going to work at St. Mungo’s. Here he was, though, working at Quality Quidditch like someone who’d never had any secret rebellious thoughts about what else he might do with himself at all.

Having been in Reg’s year, Bryn knew him just about well enough to be able to work out that his purchases were a gift and who for, even though they’d worn green and red scarves respectively. Reg had had more than a little protection from the House situation, between Sirius threatening everyone who so much as made eye contact with him for _any_ reason (which he weirdly sort of missed now), everyone with any sense being afraid of either Narcissa or Severus hexing their faces off for moving too fast around him or whatever it was Severus actually worried about, and Reg himself not actually wanting any part of the whole miserable business, since Severus wasn’t accepting even the most impersonal help until Reg had started OWL study.

It hadn’t been too bad in his year anyway, although Merlin only knew what went on in witch politics. Bast and Amycus and even Thor didn’t help Slytherin’s reputation much, but they didn’t create blood-enemies by concentrating on anyone in particular, and Reg thought everyone had been able to see he wanted nothing to do with any of it. Gilderoy just assumed everyone loved him and therefore treated everyone nicely ‘back,’ which had worked well enough to make Reggie’s eyes cross.

The thing about Bryn was, he _always_ thought he could make up for everything with enthusiasm, which probably worked better for him in sales than it had on the pitch. Reg, however, still didn’t want any buttons, or keychains, or rosettes, or ridiculously overpriced pocketwatches, and he didn’t want the balls and racquets gift-wrapped, either.

It took a lot of sidestepping to shake Bryn on the gift-wrapping, since Bryn knew enough about the Blacks to be pretty sure Reggie didn’t mean to do it himself, and Reg didn’t really want to just come right out and say _Your wrapping is ugly and my house elf will do it better_. He _really_ didn’t want to, since they were still pretending Kreacher was dead and he would have had to chat about the new elf he didn’t have. If it hadn’t been a present for Lucius he would have said he planned to use one of his and Narcissa’s elves, but that was out, obviously, and Linkin wasn’t actually all that available to Reg with Evan out of the country, even though Linkin himself hadn’t gone.

Maybe another Slytherin wouldn’t have let the facts bother him, since Bryn probably didn’t know them, would have just had Kreacher re-wrap everything nicely. While Reg didn’t have the same sort of moral whateveritwas about just up and lying that Severus did, though, he’d gotten Spike Being Stern About Saying Provably False Things often enough that just the idea made him quail a bit.

Finally he did get out, though, Lucius’s gifts safe in his robes. He thought he might swing by Fortescue’s—not to go in again so soon, just to see if those witches were using his IOU, make sure they weren’t having any trouble with it. There wasn’t any reason to think they would, since he’d sealed it with his ring. It couldn’t hurt to make sure, though.

The rain had been gusting heavy and lightening off all day, and it was light right now. So when, with a queer feeling of disappointment, he glanced in the tisanery’s big window and saw the girls having their tea with clearly no problems in life whatsoever, he took advantage of the spurt of relative good weather.

Flourish & Blotts had a great cookbook section, and he thought it would be nice to bring Kreacher back some recipes. The elf had been going a bit mental cooped up in the house with all the groceries coming by owl order, and he’d enjoy the chance to get one up on Spike by trying to improve the foreign food Spike was eating right now.

Flourish & Blotts didn’t have anything worth speaking of when it came to Balkan food, but they did have a name for him. When he stepped out of the store, he had a slip with ‘ _Dining at Durmstrang, E. Küchemaus’_ written on it.

He also had a sky full of, apparently, open hosepipes to contend with now, but he’d already made up his mind. With a sigh, he flipped the hood up on his cloak, and left the security of the awnings to pelt for Moribund’s, which had a much better selection when it came to things like travel guides. Flourish & Blotts, Reg thought with a little Spike-flavored amusement (though not so cynical, he hoped) shared the Gryff-and-puff view that if it wasn’t in Britain it wasn’t very interesting.

He didn’t make it to Moribund’s. He’d barely stepped onto the stones of Knockturn Alley at all, in fact, before a hand in a gold-trimmed brown sleeve was propelling him into a wall and roughly snatching his wand away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** :  
> 1\. Swivenhodge: Yeah, yeah, I know, but I didn't make it up. It's wizarding badminton, basically, or possibly wizarding tennis. Only I've decided that in the 20th century it's become basically how daddies do the playing-catch interaction with their little boys.
> 
> 2\. No, Madam Fortescue's reasoning about when and for how long her kid can be under the influence of a potion that doesn't wear off and is its own antidote (despite what Evan and Severus thought might be going on in Wicket when they weren't sure which potion it was yet) doesn't entirely make sense to me either. She has some weird explanation about how she budgets, but her assessment about what's possible and what's not (and, like Toby, what other people will think about her baby and how mean they'll be to him if he's a nail that sticks its head up), in addition to the fear that she's screwed him over by raising him as a witch when a wizard is a different-enough social animal that it matters, is making her choices loony and then sending her into a slightly twisted judgment loop to avoid feeling guilty about not being able (she thinks) to give her kid everything he wants or needs all the time.
> 
> I'm inclined to blame this on Albus being an uninvolved Headmaster, actually; Madam F doesn't have the benefit of having had him as her Head of House that Eileen has, and she doesn't feel he's approachable, so she's never asked him whether Florean could be a boy at school. She's just sure she knows, because… Gryffindors of this era. And she hasn't steeled herself to go be a mama-bear about it because, unlike Eileen, her kid isn't miserable all the time ever and being treated badly; he's just presented this to her as something he really wants to do when he grows up.
> 
> Incidentally, she is being unfair to his muggle-raised friends. She just assumes they'd be awful and not-understanding about him. She hasn't put out any feelers. Yes, jumping to this conclusion was absolutely racist of both her and our Mr. Black. No question.
> 
>  **ETA** : Let me clarify, because one reviewer thought I meant that _assuming muggles would have different attitudes_ was racist. Of course that isn't. It's the assumption that muggle-raised wizards would be _ipso facto unable or unwilling_ to understand that they had entered into a culture with values and mores foreign to them and _ipso facto unable or unwilling_ to make any changes to their own original stances, either for the sake of When In Rome or for the sake of a friend, that's problematic. And is especially problematic when a Hufflepuff mother is talking to her Hufflepuff child about his Hufflepuff friends.


	21. The Maiden and the Hag: Lyulyak Lodge and Somewhere Else, Bulgaria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ourself, behind ourself concealed, should startle most;  
> Dark Lord stalking remote graveyard be horror's least.  
> The prudent carries stout and swift wand, he bolts the door—  
> O'erlooking a superior spectre  
> More dear.  
>  _—(not quite) Emily Dickinson, One Need Not Be A Chamber To Be Haunted_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : ...I don't even know, guys. Um. How on earth to put it?
> 
> Children of domestic abusers can have problems understanding things like how the spectrum of Fine to A Bit Not Good is supposed to work, and how it does and doesn't change when a situation goes off the rails. And, for that matter, what 'off the rails' looks like to people who aren't either desensitized or hypersensitized to this, that, and the other sort of upsetting things.
> 
> Also: politics. And Chaucer.
> 
>  **Process Notes** :  
> Beta: ZOMG, what an (CENSORED!)  
> Author: ...Oookay, clearly you are not reading the chapter I meant to write.  
> (Much, much revision)  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Beta: ...My understanding of this chapter has just gone through a sudden sea-change: like a chemical reaction spreading out from boiling point. HOLY (CENSORED).  
> Author: Huzzah, chapter is correct now!  
> Beta: I want all of your readers to be able to read both versions, because this is CRAZY. This is tragedy in stereo, because _I can't stop seeing both heartbreaking sides at once_.  
>  Author: As you wish.
> 
> So at a certain point in this chapter there'll be a link which will take you to the original version of the scene which follows it. If you're going to read that first draft at all, read it first: I cannot imagine the two drafts would give you the same experience read out of chronological order.
> 
>  **ETA** : Sorry, guys, I was not able to figure out how to respond privately from AO3. So: contest/offer/thing is ended as of the day after Harry's birthday (happy birthday, Harry!), and if you submitted any of the following answer to the question 'what is the title referencing,' you are invited to ask any of the characters a question. If you got the _exact_ answer, go ahead and ask two! This may have to be a DVD bonus chapter since a few people got it right, we'll see.
> 
>  **Exactly right** : That optical illusion with the young woman and the old woman.  
>  **Close enough** : Those optical puzzles that you had to super-de-cross your eyes to see the picture in the haze of PATTERN. Not relevant to the title, but the same sort of thing I hoped you'd get out of reading both drafts in order.  
>  **Incorrect but awesome** _The Wife of Bath's Tale_. I completely see how y'all got there and I must reward the tributes to one of my favorite stories. Must disagree with the reader who said Severus would never let himself be put in Lady Ragnelle's position, though—I'd say that he did, when he signed on with Dumbledore. Whether or not Dumbledore passed that test will depend on your particular author, but I would note that Severus is, while in Albus's service, certainly not well-regarded during the day...
> 
>  **Location Notes** : Lyulyak Lodge is based on Lavenda Bed & Breakfast in muggle Bulgaria, if you'd like to see what kind of place they can compromise on without Severus griping too much.

“And then I said, well, of _course_ I use an impervious against rain, it’s cast _on the hood._  Well, and the cloak, too, of course.  I mean, why should I go on casting it over and over?” Reggie appealed to Spike, the flames that made up his face flickering—not with his distress, but with the draught from the little chimney.  It wasn’t strictly necessary to have chimneys for your bedroom fireplaces in a wizarding inn, but doing away with them was apparently far more of a pain than just protecting them.  Having an indoor fire without a flue was expensive and fussy magic that, according to the innkeeper, also did away with a lovely summer cross-breeze.

At least, that was what their embassy-assigned guide said the man had said.  It sounded reasonable, but given the intermediary, Evan had to distrust it on principle.  Karkaroff might have just gone off and had a drink and laughed about the stupid English tourists with his mates instead of actually trying to address Spike’s concerns about a hole in the ceiling, as far as they really knew.

This was a stance, as Severus kept pointing out, that was using up a lot of his energy and not entirely allowing him to enjoy their trip.  Evan was also afraid it might be giving him squinty, suspicious Severus eyes, but what could one do?

“No reason in the world,” Spike confirmed.  “Up efficiency.  But surely you didn’t expect reason from Ministry workers.”

This time it actually was Reggie’s eyes that did the flickering.

“Reg?” Spike prompted, his tone honing in as his eyebrow slid up.

“What the Reggie-bird doesn’t want to say to you,” Evan drawled, leaning back on the sofa (he missed his _own_ sofa.  This one was comfortable enough, but it was squashy-soft in the wrong ways and the texture of the cover was just… uninviting), “which is to say, to _you,_ is that he didn’t expect them to be reasonable, he expected them to care that he’s Regulus Black.”

“Um,” Reggie replied sheepishly to Spike’s unimpressed look.  “Well.  Yes.  That.  I mean!  It’s not that I think it ought to put us all above the law, Spike, it’s just…”

“It’s just that you think it has, whether it ought to or not,” Spike finished for him, continuing his presentation of Deeply Unimpressed In A Dressing Gown.

“Not exactly!” Reg protested.  “Just, er.  Just, well, just a _little_ bit more than that.  I mean, I just mean… I don’t mean that if I tell them my name they should immediately back off, but, well, yes, honestly, Spike, I would have expected that once they made me prove who I am they would have taken me home to Dad to deal with it there, not turned out all my pockets in the middle of the street and hoiked me into the Ministry to ask me questions for hours.  Not unless it was an Azkaban matter and they were completely sure.  And, actually, even then I think they would have done it at my house without causing a scene in public and used our floo.  Well,” he amended, “I _thought_.”  

“We get dignity and the benefit of the doubt, not complete immunity,” Evan translated, because Severus had that glazed over eyes-different-sizes look he got at Slughorn parties and everyone else got when he started talking potions.  Accompanied by the start of a little angry tic. “That’s Reggie’s idea.”

“And I don’t think putting your hood up in the rain should make them throw all the benefit of all the doubt out the window just because that’s what—” Reggie checked himself, and then looked warily around him at, presumably, the walls of his fireplace, even though Ev didn’t think Kreacher would have allowed a live ant to live in it, let alone a Ministry bug. “Just because that’s what one group of criminals decided to wear one time!”

“You did say you put it on while you were stepping into Knockturn, Reggie-bird,” Evan had to point out. “Location, location, location, and all that.”

Possibly due to being the one who’d pointed out what that one group of terribly anonymous criminals had worn that one time to that one Auror, Spike had decided not to be interested in this point. Or at least, not where Reggie could make him talk about it. “Dignity and the benefit of the doubt are things everyone should have, except in emergencies,” he said, still unimpressed but with a lower-case u.

“You’re the one who said not to expect thoughtfulness from the Ministry,” Ev pointed out, and Spike sighed and didn’t correct him.

Leaning back instead, Spike tapped his lip meditatively.  “Here’s the bit I have difficulty with.  I know you gave them answers that both they and capital-H He found innocuous, because there you are and I would know,” he pinned the flooed Reg with an ominous look, “if you were only pretending to be essentially all right.  And I _know_ that he questioned you himself afterwards, because he did with me and Evan and there’s more information to be taken from you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Evan asked, nudging him fondly, rib to shoulder, and squeezing on the other shoulder with the rest of his arm.

Severus blinked in that train-of-thought-interrupted sort of way.  “We think it possible Reg has been an eyewitness to things we think may have happened but have never had confirmed,” he said.  “In addition to which, certain favored parties like to brag to him.”

“You realize _I’m_ the one in the fire, if someone has a way to put ears into the Floo network, do you?” Reg asked.  Evan thought he was raising an eyebrow, but it was hard to be sure with his face made of flame.

“If someone does, since we don’t know what their hypothetical method, way is, how would we know whether or not they can hear anything outside the fire or the fireplace?” Spike asked practically.

“Spike,” Evan sighed, “Reggie’s in the Black family townhouse and we’re in a foreign inn you picked in a coin-flip between the two left over after the one our charming guide was trying to get us into and the one he was urging us against and the pretty one with the pool everybody would have thought I would have bullied you into and the really cheap horrible one everyone would have thought you would have bullied me into as revenge for trying to bully you in the first place.”

“…What?” asked Reg, bewildered.

“I highly, _highly_ doubt that anyone knows where we’re staying,” Evan summarized, “and Spike’s warded everything six ways from Sunday anyway.”  

“There’s always pensieves,” Spike said darkly.

“Spike-my-spike, you _cannot_ live your life like that,” Evan sighed, dropping his forehead to Spike’s shoulder with enough of a thunk to underline his despair.  

Instantly cheering up, Spike very smugly declared, “Watch me.”

“Not that I actually want to know,” Reg said in his own despairing sort of voice while Ev aarghed into Spike’s shoulder and tried to sort of chin the dressing down to get at him more directly.  Spike had already washed his brewing soap off for the day, thus the dressing gown, and he was sure to be a lovely seashell pale under just one interferesome layer of black vest.  If Evan was lucky, it might be one of the ones with the straps that unbuttoned and he could very very subtly aargh his way over to the collarbone.  “But what was the bit you have difficulty with?”

“I should think that was obvious: how did you get out?  I can’t imagine they didn’t use some sort of truth-confirming magic, if not truth-evoking, if you were an actual suspect.”

“Maybe you’re just assuming too much competence,” Evan suggested—still into linen, sadly, not skin.

“That auror who—you aren’t fooling anyone, you know—that auror who interviewed us after the Portkey Office affair isn’t an agent to take lightly,” Severus reminded him, the arm sliding around his back making a mockery of the repressive tone.  “Law enforcement isn’t my area, of course; I don’t say I’m a good judge, and we can’t know how typical he is.  And he didn’t even get all the in-reserve information I was willing to let him shake out of me.  However, the only thing of importance that he _let me get away with_ was insisting that Evan is the serial womanizer his clients like to hope he is.”

“Er?” asked Evan, sitting up.  “This is news.  Am I expected to back that up?”

“No,” Severus assured him, leaning his way maybe an inch more. Not just the usual subtle millimeter-or-so: Evan didn’t just _feel_ him move closer, he actually saw Spike’s shoulders shift.  “He knew I was lying.  As I said, he let me get away with it.”

“Why?”

“I presume because he had too many other interviews and thought he could follow up later if necessary.”

“I mean, why did you say I was?”

Severus shrugged, using the motion to lean in more definitely until he was under Evan’s arm again.  Evan himself would reserve judgment on whether he deserved to squirm, because this was clearly him squirming if not actually cringing, insofar as Severus knew how to do either of those things.   Until Ev had decided, though, he was more than willing to take the benefit.   “I had to paint you as useless to explain why we didn’t try to get out, so I said you’d proven you didn’t react quickly when a girl slapped you, and then it… went from there.”

“Did his eyes do the shifty-darty thing?” Evan asked Reg.

“Yep,” Reg confirmed, enjoying the show but probably mostly happy not to be talking about himself.

“Let’s try this again.  Spike, heart, cheesecake on my lamb-chop, _why_ did you lie to the nice Auror about something that was going to make him find out we’re not just flatmates of convenience about five minutes after he starts looking into it, when absolutely no one has bothered up till now?”

“Because he’s not going to bother, either.  He thinks he knows exactly why I lied, and thinks he knows everything he needs to know.  I let him uncover a ‘deep dark secret I was uncomfortable about’ and didn’t _want_ him to find out.  Ergo, he had a very successful interrogation wherein he unearthed The Guilty Secret I Was Protecting. I surely had one, because everyone does, but he’s forced me to disclose mine.  No further investigation required,” Spike said flatly.

 

“…I beg your pardon?” Evan inquired civilly, drawing away a little.  “Exactly how am I a deep, dark, _guilty_ secret?”

“Obviously you’re precisely the opposite sort of secret from that,” Severus snapped.  “But you’d have to be if we were muggles, as you very well know. I showed him more than enough of me da’s lad for him to think that he was talking to a half-blood from a rough part of town who’s still got muggle ideas pulling his strings will-he nill-he.”

“Oh, you were occlulying,” Evan concluded, relaxing and pulling him back and ignoring the bewildered face and the mouthed _occlu-lying?_  Well, not so much ignoring it as giving it a nuzzle between the confused, twisty eyebrows.  “Well done, then, although I still say it was odd of you.”

“…I panicked,” Severus admitted, sighing and wilting into him.  “I was trying to support your public-face by saying you’d just proved you were useless in a crisis, and suddenly I realized that I was trapping myself into telling him Lily had been in our flat.  Lily’s not _supposed_ to be in our flat.  So I needed a distraction, instantly, and suddenly there it was, a good way to make him think he had my measure.”

“Why was Evans in your flat?”  Reg asked.

“My mother sent her to shout at me,” Severus misled him gloomily.  “ _They_ never stopped being on good terms.  And the _last_ thing I need is Aurors asking her and her bloody husband about it and then _he_ comes to ask me why Lily was in my flat, probably with a mace.”  

Evan was hard put to it not to press him down to the sofa and snog the life out of him, even if it was the wrong sofa and a rather unappealing and pedestrian one at that.

“In any case,” Severus went on, “as I was saying before everyone decided to minutely examine my every life choice…”

“Stow it, Strum Und Drang,” advised Evan affectionately, and kissed him behind the ear.

Severus made a huffy _mmph_ noise and continued, “As I was _saying,_ I don’t underestimate the Aurors after that experience—I hope I don’t. And, Reg, you’re more closely tied to matters on which I was questioned than I am.  It’s not my wish to give offense, but I think it unavoidable: my difficulty is that I don’t understand how you got out unscathed.  And I believe you know what I mean by ‘unscathed.’”

“Well, I feel a lot less offended now I know _you_ talked yourself into a corner,” Reg said, trying dry on for size.  Spike curled a _nice try, Sparky_ look at him. “Anyway, it wasn’t _that_ hard.  Nobody told me about the Portkey Office thing or the giants till after, and how do _I_ know if people bragging is true? That’s just hearsay, isn’t it?”

“I _knew_ someone had been sneaking my books in third year,” Severus sighed.

“Well,” Reg defended himself, “I was thinking about taking Muggle Studies and no one could tell me what the class was like and the textbooks in the library were, er.”

“From the twenties?”

“That, right.  And if I’d asked one of the Hufflepuffs or something to borrow a book, someone would have noticed.  Stealing books from a Slytherin a year up is perfectly respectable, even if it’s a weird book and everyone knows he’s only letting you get away with it because he’s scared of Narcissa.”

“Actually, I was letting you get away with it because presumably-you had returned the first one in good condition and continued not to make trouble for me and good books should be read,” Severus replied.

“He was extremely scared of Narcissa,” Evan stage-whispered, got thumped on the thigh, and grinned.   “Although in retrospect some of them ought not to have been classified as good books,” Spike reflected, belatedly deciding to pretend Evan hadn’t spoken.  “I mention your bibliokleptomania—”

“That is not possibly a word.”

“Steal a dictionary and look it up.  I mention your rampant and outrageous book-theft—”

“Spike, the wards on your trunk didn’t even zing me,” Reg said patiently.  Sort of patiently.  Not _impatiently._  It wasn’t really to do with patience, Evan supposed.  It was more that sometimes Spike’s friends got this sort of a smile with their eyebrows high in the middle and sloping off low towards the side of their faces.  Not really a _stressed_ smile, exactly, and not quite either sad or amused, and Ev felt ‘fond’ might have been overstating it a bit.  He thought that meant they were reminding themselves that they’d decided to be friends with him, and this was who he was.

Quite often they got it at around the times Evan was beginning to idly toy with the idea of kissing him as a gentle, efficient, and delightful method of shutting him up, with the added bonus that he usually kept trying to talk indignantly into Evan’s mouth for a good thirty seconds into it. Which was not only lovely but fun to try to decipher when Evan could be bothered.  And then Evan could win points with him later by bringing up things he’d said with his mouth stoppered, which made him absolutely light up.

“I mention,” Spike sterned on at Reg, “your blithely dissipated toffee-nosed assumption that you may appropriate the property of others simply because it does not actively hurt you at the moment you—stop laughing!”  

“Cannot,” Evan managed, and buried his face in Severus’s long, warm throat, arms wrapped all around him.

He was thus ideally located to feel the grumpy noise Spike made, even if he couldn’t quite hear it over his own snickering.  “I _mention_ it,” Spike said in a tone that was just as grumpy, a hand sneaking up to lace into Evan’s hair, “because ‘whether or not it was hearsay matters’ is only a concept in courts with a standardized justice system that does not, in fact, actually run on rumor, public opinion, and patronage.”

“Well,” said Regulus with an air of injured innocence that made even Evan instantly itch to swat him, “thanks to your _letting me borrow them_ , I _do_ know what’s considered good evidence and what’s not.  It doesn’t matter what _they_ think, if they’re wrong about how to tell if something’s true.  If it’s only hearsay, then _I_ know that I don’t really know, so I shouldn’t _say_ I know, because I _don’t_ know.”

There was a long pause, during which Evan seriously contemplated prying himself up to look at Severus’s face in case it had gone dangerous, even though he was really extremely comfortable and warm and Spike’s hand, up until it went still, had been rubbing his neck.  Then—

“Good kitten,” Severus purred.  “Excellent weasel-kit.  You _shall_ have a biscuit.”

“I’m sure it’s dogs that get biscuits,” Evan put in over Reggie’s pleased and whiny _Spiiiiiiike!_

Then Reggie had evidently remembered he was supposed to be at least not-eleven, if not actually a grown-up, and asked, “What sort of biscuit?”

“A metaphorical sort,” Severus replied smartly.  “We don’t have a kitchen in here, and baking with no other amenities than a fireplace is far more fuss than I can be bothered with, even if it were, technically, baking.  But I shall remember you at the market if you did as well on the other matter.  Weren’t you assigned to help with the planning?”

“Well,” Reg said evasively, “I guess I wasn’t very good at it, and I had to practice occlumency really a lot.  He did say that was the most important.  And Dad’s been pressing me to take over more with accounts and things, and _he_ also wanted me to start getting better at all that greasy stuff Lucius does, and I’ve had an awful lot of background reading and things, and she’s really not very patient, Spike.”

Spike considered this, and then smacked Evan lightly in the back of the head.

“What did I do?” Evan complained, turning his head only enough to meet Spike’s eyes.

“You made me listen to an entire year of Lockhart _whinging,_ O Captain my Captain, because you replaced yourself as Seeker with Reg, when _clearly_ you could have thrown the panting idiot a bone and put Reg as Keeper.”  

Reggie beamed, and Evan pointed out, “Yes, but then we would have lost every single game no matter how well you and Reggie and the whole rest of the team put together did.”

“Granted,” a judicious Severus allowed, “but I wouldn’t have had to listen to Lockhart repeatedly assuring me you had a secret passion for him that made you not want to see his delicate skin be bruised.”

“He said that about Gamp, too,” Evan pointed out, settling sleepily back down as Reggie snickered.

“Yes, but I was tempted to throttle him less and shove him out fewer windows when he said it about Gamp,” Severus said reasonably.  

“Anyway,” Evan further pointed out, “you can win on points with a sorry Seeker.  We did win at least once when I was off my game.”

“Yeah, but it’s a lot harder when the other team _knows_ your Seeker’s rubbish than when a good Seeker’s just having a bad day, Evvie,” Reggie pointed out.

“Even Gryffindor isn’t so anti-strategy as to fail to take advantage of such an obvious weakness,” Severus agreed drolly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Evan mused.  “They’re sprinters, Gryffindors are.  Hufflepuff, now, I wouldn’t want to try it against them.  But Gryffindors _throw themselves into_ everything.  They don’t hold back.  They’d exhaust themselves too early, d’you see.”

“What you’re saying,” Spike said, turning up his drollery, “and I agree with you, is that the only way such a team could win would be to score and score and score until their opponents realized they were so far behind that they’d never catch up, and decided to instead catch the snitch and lose in a blaze of glory.  The problem with this strategy, Evander, is that it is by its nature an endurance match.  The targeted team and its captain _must_ be less willing than the one with the weak Seeker to potentially stay out in all weather, and certainly to miss classes and meals and sleep.”

Evan waited curiously for Severus to finish making his point.

He realized that both Reggie and Spike were looking at him.   _Extremely_ pointedly.

Hurt, he demanded, “What?”

Later on, when the empty fire had died to orange embers and the sky was quite dark and star-pricked, Evan didn’t care how dreary the sofa was, and had forgotten his concern that the sheets might give at least one of them a rash.  He had a slow and steady heartbeat under one ear, a low and lovely voice pouring in the other.

“This verse of gold and black a-written was, which I began, astounded, to behold,” Severus rumbled, contentedly reading something that was probably very unsettling, considering how happy he was with it. Evan was too sleepy to take in more than his cadence, the way baritone could make its speaker thrum.  “For though the sweetness of the one increased my fears, the gloomy second made my heart grow bold!  That one me heated, t’other did me cold.  No wit had I for error, for to choose to enter or to flee would save myself—or lose.”[1]

Evan did smile a minute later when the poem started listing trees, Not that he had the faintest idea why it did, or particularly cared.  It was just that they’d spent so many years revising together that his attention couldn’t help but be caught, at least for a moment, when Spike started talking in a making-lists tone of voice. It had always been so likely that there’d be an exam later.

As Severus started to meander through a purplish bit of verse devoid of plot, cunning and philosophy (as far as Ev could tell, what with not having been paying attention to its context), he thought this might be a good time to start nudging Spike towards the consensus that a good stopping point had arrived.  He hummed peacefully into Spike’s sternum, started thumbing circles under his ear and into the soft place above his sharp hip.

Spike laughed silently at him, and in a _try harder_ voice read on. “Although at once was I aware of Pleasure nigh, and of Array, and Lust, and Courtesy.  And of the Craft that can—and has the might!—to make by force a man to do folly… although disguised was she, I will not lie.”

He dipped his head, the better to purr into Evan’s ear, his own bookless hand starting to go a bit sneaky.  “And, by himself, under an oak, I guess, saw I Delight, standing with Gentilesse.  I saw Beauty, without any attire—Evan?”

“ _Ow!_ ” Evan had announced, bolting upright as his foot seared.  Indignantly, kicking off the covers, he complained, “There is something very fishy about that man and his timing, Spike, are we sure he doesn’t have some sort of clock with a setting for ‘most inconvenient’?”

Severus was staring at him, wary, eyebrow up.

Evan blinked back.  “Aren’t you getting a…?” He waved at Severus’s left arm.

Spike shook his head, very slowly.

“Huh,” Ev mused, and summoned his clothes.  

“What do you think—?”

“Haven't the foggiest,” Evan shrugged, “and seeing as I’m not his pet student he likes to groom, I don’t imagine he’d think it was adorable and give me a pat on the head if he caught me second-guessing him.  Well, first-guessing, I s’pose.”

“Perhaps not,” Severus agreed in a shut-down sort of voice.   _He_ wasn’t concerned about guessing—or, Ev knew, he’d rather call it hypothesizing—but then, he wouldn’t have had to be even if he’d been called himself.

As he was about to put his over-robe on, he noticed that Severus was still regarding him with grave eyes and a slightly furrowed brow, a slightly pinched mouth.  “Spike, ‘Evvie’s useless’ was just something we’re telling the Aurors, right?” he inquired, tilting a teasing eyebrow up.

“Just… don’t be a prat,” Severus… well, advised, although Evan, surprised, thought his tone might have translated to a begging note in someone else’s voice.  “Don’t… don’t make the mistake with him that Reggie made about the Aurors.”

Evan considered this as he fastened his robe, and suggested, “I don’t need him to _like_ me.”

“Just don’t be a prat,” Spike pressed, all storms behind his wooden face.  He stood up fiercely to not so much kiss Evan as bite him on the mouth, shoved the Auror’s portkey into his pocket, and gave him a savage little shove.

Evan smiled understanding at him, touched his face.  He looked out the window to remind himself of cold things before anything unbalancing could happen.  Then he apparated away and let the summons take him.

The good thing about apparating into a summons was that you didn’t get the nausea and the shaken-up, rattled-around, repeatedly squelched-to-atomic-size-and-stretched-out-to-fit-the-sun feeling that Evan had been assured that practice would eventually smooth out of a wizard’s self-apparitions and even out of side-alongs.  How much practice, no one said.  

There wasn’t any risk of splinching, either, unless you were a complete idiot, because the will and the where were both supplied by a mind that was currently _looking_ at the where.  A mind, furthermore, that if Spike was right might just be, by now, inhumanly focused as well as inhumanly strong.  So all you had to do was remember who you were, without any of the rest of it. And Ev was quite settled in his own body—worked steadily to stay that way no matter how lazy Spike and Reggie liked to say he was.

Granted, if someone (that someone being Narcissa and only Narcissa) had asked him, he would have admitted he rather thought it was a miracle that Spike managed to get anywhere without splinching, ever. So maybe that wasn’t as important in Place Face Pace as creaky old Flashlock had said it was.

The persistently unnerving thing was that one never knew where one would end up.  The Dark Lord had, apparently, decided that one’s headquarters could never be infiltrated or otherwise invaded if they didn’t exist.   Which was hard to argue, but if Evan found himself back in England and had to get back to Bulgaria under his own power, he was going to have a rough go of it, and Spike was not going to be happy.  Was, in fact, going to go out of his _mind_ until Evan could get word to him, because there was no way Evan could just apparate back himself.

Maybe Dumbledore or the Dark Lord could have managed it, but Ev was not going to be able to just pop through national border-wards.  Not a chance.  Some of these European countries even still had ancient _city-state_ wards they’d never taken down, because why would they, when war was never entirely out of fashion?  

Fortunately for Evan, when he emerged from the _darknessmovement_ into the world of shapes and gravity and smells, not only the stars but the trees and night flowers looked the same, and when he cast a tempus charm it was still past ten, not the after eight it would have been in England.

There was a sort of cold prickle at the back of his neck.  He turned on his heel, sinking onto his knee as he turned.

And, as an afterthought, wondered vaguely if he should have tried harder to avoid being graceful, should have fumbled it, let himself be caught by surprise.  If this was what Spike meant by being prattish in the eyes of a Dark Lord who got snarly about Spike writing in perfectly ordinary (if somewhat cramped) quillwork when he knew Muggle cursive that, while considerably smoother, had taken Ev ages to learn to decipher. A Dark Lord who, in other words, clearly had not been raised in a Noble House, whether or not his blood meant that he ought to have been. Whose feelings about his own given name had not led him to encourage other wizards to use it.  

Of course, he was graceful himself, but it was a studied grace. In the same way, perhaps, that Spike’s voice was elegant. Evan wondered if Spike had meant to warn him against seeming to show off that not all his gifts had been hard-won.

But then, Spike thought just about everything anybody did was prattish. A fellow couldn’t be expected to narrow it down just out of the blue like that.

“My Lord,” he murmured as the familiar boot came to stop a few feet in front of his lowered gaze.  He wasn’t especially noticing that they were, while not of the whimsical house-slipper variety, longer and pointier toes than most British wizards under 150 or so went for—although you did see that sort on here on the Continent more often. Evan didn’t see the use of it; they looked more silly than elegant in his opinion, and had to have charms to keep them from pinching and throwing one’s balance off.  It was one of the few things he and Rodolphus agreed on.

He certainly didn’t notice that they were rather badly made of Hebridean Black dragonhide, cut against the grain and dyed a very-darkly shiny grey that was wearing off, as though the leather had been passed off as Ukrainian Ironbelly before being given to a cobbler who didn’t customarily handle dragonhide.

He also wasn’t noticing that there were socks (black) under the boots rather than hose, but no trousers or visible undergarb under the filmy but perfectly opaque black robes that played into every passing breath of air like an illuminator’s dream of Dark Wizardry.  He certainly wasn’t occupying himself with hoping the Dark Lord was wearing shorter pants under there than was the current fashion in under-robes for wizards of his age, and not just because any of the alternatives were _ugh._

He simply hadn’t the space to notice anything like that when the moon was doing such interesting things to the gloss on his Lord’s traditional, sensible, ostentation-eschewing, wisely-chosen Ironbelly-hide boots, to the occasional pale stone against patches of dark earth, teaming up with the breeze to help the grass put on a show of rippling like water.

He also didn’t in any way notice (he never did) that the Dark Lord had, more and more since Bella’s attack of disturbing mimicry, started putting a sort of breathy gravity into his voice.  It didn’t just make him sound eldritch in the right setting and creepy in the wrong ones, it was eerily familiar.  

Evan hadn’t quite pinned it down yet (and not just because he hadn’t noticed it), but it made him think of high stones and home and comforting hot food.  It would have been creepy and _wrong_ if he’d ever noticed it, but of course he didn’t because his Lord was talking and of course one had to pay attention to that, even if the Dark Lord was just saying, “Rosier,” and then waiting with a frisson of impatience that wasn’t pompous in the least, because things could only be pompous if the pomp was unmerited.

“You called, my Lord,” Evan replied, since they seemed to be opening with statements of the obvious.  He could have been at home—well, at inn—figuring out what on earth Spike’s fourteenth-century bizarrity was about, if anything.  Or not bothering to figure it out and distracting Spike from it.  Spike had seemed nearly ready to be distracted.

Voldemort said, “Young Black will have complained to you and my knife of being assaulted on the very stones of Diagon Alley.”

Evan thought Snape (and it was probably to everyone’s benefit that the man thought Snape was his something (however revolting that was, which of course it wasn’t); it was an honor) would have called that a supposition.  Evan would have called it a probe, but it wasn’t his business to call it anything.  He answered, “My cousin has told us about his encounter with the Aurors, my Lord.”

The Dark Lord, who had been walking slowly around him like a circling panther (very Spike-like; Evan would have approved if he hadn’t been offended, which he wasn’t, so he did, except that it was so dangerous when the panther wasn’t Spike), spun on his Cuban heel so that his not-at-all-overdone spectral robe floated on the air a bit at the hems.

“How foolish they have been,” Voldemort mused.  Evan detected a distinct note of glee under his grave condemnation, but didn’t wonder at all whether it was for the folly of their enemies or for the discomfiture of their pampered kitten.  “To lay rough hands on the scion and heir of one of our greatest families.  Such a very _young_ man.  So earnest, so well-intentioned.  All feel it, who meet him.  Who would believe any harm of the boy? It is an insult and a threat to every noble family.  Is it not, Rosier?”

The way Regulus had told his story, the Aurors had pounced first, the _moment_ they’d seen a wizard heading towards Knockturn Alley pull a hood over his head, and worked out who he was afterwards.  

Evan was, however, under no delusion that facts, or even the personal truth of the person a thing had happened to, mattered in politics.  “Now that you explain it, my Lord, I can quite see how it could be taken in that way.”

“So shall they all,” Voldemort agreed, satisfied, and panthered around again for a while.  

Evan waited patiently, gazing absently past the Dark Lord’s shoulder and distantly noticing the names of his relatives writ brightly in the sky and most certainly not speculating.  It was as good a way as any of not-noticing the slight spread of silver at Voldemort’s temples and putting off having to decide whether to not-notice or be very impressed by the way his eyes had gone from a warm brown deepening to burgundy to a color that was starting to show flecks of true red even in the dark.  Either way, he wouldn’t be worried by it.  Either it was magnificent or it wasn’t happening, so it wasn’t any cause for concern, much less speculation.

After a moment of looking down at him, Voldemort said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “My good friend Darius believes I do not use you to your worth, Rosier.”

Evan arranged his face into Vague Attentive Curiosity, without in any way meeting the Dark Lord’s eyes.  Slow beats, he reminded his heart.

“Can you match his skill as an artist?”

“Certainly not, my Lord,” Evan replied instantly.  “He’s my father.”

“Of course, of course,” Voldemort replied indulgently.  Perhaps Evan was imagining the trace of a sneer.  Perhaps long exposure to Severus in classes with Gryffindors had taught him to see those where on other faces the same muscle-movements only meant twitches or tiny smiles.

(Merlin’s close-cropped thicket he was imagining it.)

Voldemort was walking around him again.  He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be looking around nervously to track the movements, or successfully fighting the urge to track the movements, or what.  Spike would probably have had a better instinct.

“Has my knife told you,” the Dark Lord mused with a touch of dark, dreamy whimsy, “what a weapon he hath given unto me.”

“My Lord?” Evan inquired politely.

“What does a muggle wear, Rosier?”

Evan blinked.  “I’m hardly an expert, my Lord.”

“Come, Rosier.  Even so well-protected a young pureblood as yourself must have some notion.”

To avoid forcing Voldemort to bring up either Evan’s family’s hundreds of hours in very muggle museums or Evan’s personal long-term partnership with a half-blood with all its implications, Evan turned up one hand on his knee in a shrug. “Some of them wear those awkward stiff blue trousers, and some of them wear trousers with matching overrobes that are extraordinarily short, if not quite as short as summer capes, and many of the women wear frocks without any overrobes at all.  Their casual shoes can be extremely strange, and boots are comparatively uncommon.”

“And what do they do in bad weather, Rosier?”

“Suffer?” Evan suggested, baffled at least as much by the line as questioning as by the search for an acceptable answer.  “There are paintings of muggles wearing fur, and holding up… sort of cloth shields on sticks against the sun and rain.”

Instead of supplying the words _umbrellas_ and _parasols_ for him, as Evan was 99% sure he could have done, the Dark Lord took another spin around him and demanded, “And what do wizards wear, Rosier?”

“Er… lots of things, my Lord. It all depends.”

“But if a witch or wizard is walking out of doors, Rosier, and you know nothing else about them but that they are a magical citizen of Britain, what do you assume they are wearing?”

Evan decided to let himself be utterly baffled; it felt like the best course.  “Something on their feet, more often boots than not if you don’t know anything about them… if it’s a nice day and you don’t know anything, some sort of robe is all you can assume, really.”

“And if it isn’t a nice day, Rosier?

“Then it might be either trousers and a shirt or undergarb or a frock under an overrobe, or a robe under a cloak.  Or all three, if the weather’s very cold and the wizard prefers more clothing to more spellwork.  Might even be all three layers and a vest,” Evan added, not smiling or thinking about any ridiculous people in particular.  “Or just a caped waistcoat with a cooling charm over a shirt if it’s very hot.  Well, and trousers in that case, obviously.”

“Ah, a cloak,” the Dark Lord said, in the tone of someone who had wanted to say that very thing about two sentences ago and was rather annoyed that the prattle had gone on so long that their chance to say it naturally had passed. “Tell me, Rosier, what is a cloak?”

Fortunately, Evan had got quite good at not giving people the side-eye, given how prickly the thirteen-year-old Spike had been about receiving the raised eyebrow he himself had been prone to dole out at a moment’s notice.  “As you wish, my Lord,” he agreed, in a _you asked for it_ sort of resigned tone.

He didn’t know how to describe a cloak other than either ‘er, it’s a cloak’ or in Spike-language.  Deciding that, on balance, _taxing_ was a safer kind of irritation than _provoking,_ he said:

“It’s a more-or-less-circular outer garment which could end anywhere from mid-thigh to below the heel, sometimes with sleeve-ish things of various sorts, depending on how much the wizard expects to get done while wearing it.  It usually fastens in the front, and might either also have a front-counterweight or just a charm to keep it from slipping off down the back.  They’re staples; you have to have different ones for different degrees of formality unless you’re completely oblivious.  Whether the hood develops out of the fabric in the rain or is always there is up to you and your tailor; some people think they spoil the line or make the line and some people think you can use them as an extra pocket.  The first two positions both have something going for them, depending on your tailor,” Evan added judiciously, “but the third is _egregious,_ even if only for reasons of common sense.  I mean, what if it _does_ start to rain, and you’ve forgotten you were storing your puffskein back there?”

Voldemort was giving him, with his red eyes, the sort of flat, leaden _what is the MATTER_ _with you and why am I inflicting it on myself_ look that Severus tended to get at the few dinner parties he didn’t duck.

“I mention puffskeins only as an example of wet things that some foolish wizard would not like to forgetfully tip onto his own head,” Evan further added, dipping his head humbly in case his use of second person had been the bad mistake.  “I’m sure it’s mostly Hufflepuffs who do it.”

The _why god why can’t I hit it_  look went on for another few seconds, and then the Dark Lord pressed an unenchanted breath through his nose.  If it was a bit on the growly side, rather than lofty and unearthly, Evan didn’t notice at all.  “Rosier,” Voldemort said, in a trying-for-patience voice.

Evan honestly didn’t know what that was about.  Voldemort liked Spike, after all; hadn’t it been a Spikeish answer?  Very informative!  Well, complete, anyway, given that Voldemort certainly knew what a ruddy cloak was.  Considering that Evan had no idea which part of the answer he’d wanted, what choice had he _given_ Evan but to give him all the information there was?

“Rosier, how many cloaks do you own, in your undoubtedly vast collection, that have no hoods at all?”

Evan frowned.  “And don’t develop one in the cold or wet, you mean, my Lord?  Why would I have any like that?”

“Do you know anyone who does?”

“I might, I suppose,” Evan said, letting his tone show he was highly dubious.  “It’s possible.  But even Hogwarts uniform cloaks have hoods; even the muggleborns get the idea they’re expected without having to be told.   They’re just… there.”

“Yes,” the Dark Lord agreed expansively, smiling down on him.  Evan was of course delighted to have somehow pleased his Lord, who was in no way a smug git.  “The hooded cloak has been the sigil of the witch and the wizard in Britain from time immemorial.  It has distinguished us since the time of the druids.”

“Ah,” Evan nodded after a moment.  “I see, my Lord.”

“Do you, Rosier?”

“Well, my Lord, I don’t claim to understand your plans, but I do remember Regulus saying that the Aurors decided he was suspicious because he’d put up his hood.  When it started raining.”

“The hood is a shield from the weather,” the Dark Lord mused grandiloquent—er, grandly, “and, as you say, the unthinking _right_ of every witch and every wizard, more so even than shoes, for one can make a hood of some fallen leaf or unused empty sack, at need.  But it has ever been more than that.  Far, far more, Rosier.  It is the mark of the stranger, of the Beyond, of the faithful, of the shadow in the night, of the outlaw and of the _noble_ outlaw.  Is there not, Rosier, something _wrong_ when an Englishman fears a hood?”

“If it’s a green hood, my Lord, it would certainly be a bit strange, I can see that,” Evan allowed cautiously.  He could half hear Spike laying out etymology on the word _hoodlum_ in his head.  He even half-remembered Binns droning…

Something about how easy it had been for young witches and wizards to dodge in and out of the Muggle population around the time Hogwarts was founded, sticking their wands into all sorts of causes, sometimes just making mischief. Everyone had worn hoods then.  Political passion, especially of the drunken variety, had been epidemic in both the magical and muggle spheres, and disappearing into a crowd had been the easiest thing in the world no matter who you were, as long as you weren’t stupid, whether you had magic or not.  One of the reasons Helga Hufflepuff had considered for a while that Slytherin might have had a point, hadn’t it been?  She’d been pretty hot on the unfairness of mugglebaiting and wizards taking sides in muggle arguments.  Spike would know.  Lucius might, for that matter, although Evan was inclined to take Lucius’s interpretations with a dash more salt.

Voldemort loomed down at him, his robe billowing out behind him in a frankly unnatural way, magnifying him like a menacing blowfish.  “And are we not green?”

“Well, there is that,” he agreed, rather reluctant.  He was frankly more afraid of the Sherwoodly tantrum Spike would throw if the Dark Lord mandated a uniform of green hoods (especially if it included green hose) than he was of getting hexed into a screaming lump.  It might have been silly of him, but you couldn’t help what you were silly about.

“There is,” the Dark Lord agreed—rather hissily, in Evan’s opinion, except that he didn’t have an opinion, “and we are.  And if they are so _foolish_ as to pin their fears on such a common thing, on a thing shared by us all—why, we must show them how to fear it, Rosier.”

Evan wasn’t even trying to catch up at this point.  As far as he was concerned, all he could hope for was to save them all from bare stockings. “Mind you, my Lord, a tribute is generally better received if it doesn’t actually cross the line into outright mimicry.  At least, that’s how things are in art.  But you see what I mean, my Lord.  The one is flattering and can create allies, the other only makes enemies and outrage.”

Enemies, outrage, Severus deciding he would _actually_ rather die than be forced to walk around with practically bare legs.  Wilkes having far too much fun walking around with practically bare legs.  Lockhart noticing that people were walking around with practically bare legs, not noticing what they were doing, and presuming-himself-desired at people until some moron, sadist, or person who hadn’t met him actually let him join.  The mind _boggled._

“Quite right, Rosier,” the Dark Lord agreed, straightening.  His robes were just robes again, and he appeared again, at least for the moment, rather more like a rational being.  “And now, Rosier, I shall ask you again, in a different way.  Of course,” he flipped out long, pale fingers dismissively, “you will not compare your talents to your father’s.  But tell me this.  You are aware that I do not allow all of my Death Eaters to know each other’s names and faces: that you know only those whose identities you could have guessed without being told.”

“I did suppose it, my Lord,” Evan admitted, wary again.

“Naturally you know, in the main, largely those of your own age.  Then if I set your father a task and tell him ‘do this for the Death Eaters of your generation,’ and tell you ‘do this for the Death Eaters of yours,’ can you do work he would be proud of?”

Evan shifted his weight backward on his heel a bit, and blinked.  “Well,” he said slowly, “if you’re talking about making them portraits, of course, although in my experience you’d have to hold Snape up at wandpoint.”

“That is not the task I have in mind.”

“Then I couldn’t promise you anything without knowing what you mean, my Lord,” he shrugged candidly.

Voldemort told him.

Evan fell back from his knee onto his heels.  Tilting his head, he said, “…Huh.”

[He apparated back to the hotel soon after that](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7585276), without any strain at all, so they couldn’t have been too far away.  It was just as well, too, because his mind was almost too full of silver to focus properly.  Quicksilver, maybe, darting, curling, the gleam and the dark and the negative space…

Snape was looking worried, and had overprepared, naturally.  The fire was roaring and the sofa blanket had gone all greyish, which probably meant Snape had done something nice to the texture.  There was a plate of stuff and some sticks on the side table, maybe toasting forks.

_“Are you all right?”_

The door to the bathroom was open, and there was all scented steam coming out, and Evan caught a glimpse of a tray of potions and some bandages or something of that sort.  And then he could see that there were candles in the bedroom, which meant probably there were other nice things in there, too.

_ “What did he want?” _

He gave Snape a smile, which could possibly have been on the distracted side, and settled down to work, sending the plate of bread-and-things off to the mantle with a flick of his wand and enlarging the side-table to a good writing-desk height.

_ “Evan?” _

Of course, he could only do first drafts of sketches without having even pictures of faces in front of him, although his memory for faces was quite well trained.  He should be able to at least make a start when it came to the people he knew well.  Malfoy and Regulus and Bellatrix especially.  His own partner would take more thought, especially since he was under special and very sarcastic instruction not to burden Snape with anything heartrendingly beautiful that would, due to being striking, get him noticed and killed even if he’d agree to wear it.

_“Evan?”_

At least, he should be able to make a start with contour, if not with design, but did he _need_ to start with contour?  Yes, he probably did; you didn’t want to force a design around pre-existing curves or angles you hadn’t properly accounted for, you wanted to weave designs around those shapes.

_ “Evan, can you even hear me?” _

But he could _conceptualize_ , at least.  Take Malfoy: platinum on black.  All that floaty hair, those albino peacocks: a study in striking, whether it was advisable or not.  Liked his hunting, oh, didn’t he just.  Evan didn’t know whether he or Rodolphus Lestrange had actually gone so far as to go Wild Hunting with muggles yet, but he wouldn’t have been at all surprised.  A touch of Herne?

_ “Ev?” _

Rodolphus would just be solid, solid, solid.  Placid, pleased, calm, not half so dramatic—

A flash of green was Evan’s whole world.  When it cleared, his parchment was black ash.

He turned to Severus, slowly.  His hands, he could barely feel through a curtain of numbness, were starting to shake.  Severus’s face was dead white, his jaw dead set and his eyes blazing black ice, the way they went when he’d decided he couldn’t care if he threw his whole life out the window.

In a voice so steady it surprised him, Evan inquired, “Did you just avada my sketches?”

Severus looked, if possible, even more furious.  “Try not to be more insane than you can help,” he snarled, his throat so tight every word looked and sounded wrenched from it.

Evan’s own throat was spasming a bit, too, but he just about managed to get out, “ _Priori_ _incantato_ _._ ”

The wispy ghost of a crackling lightning bolt slipped away from Severus’s fingers.  Hung in the air.  Faded.  His wand was sheathed at his side.

Evan looked at it.  “That’s the spell you hit Lockhart with when he tried to kiss you.”  

Actually, it hadn’t hit Lockhart.  Lockhart had been faster than Severus’s draw for once, although the disbelieving shocked outrage had probably helped him out there.

So Evan didn’t know what it would do it if ever hit a person.  He did know what it would do when it hit a solid slab of warded oak: Flitwick and the elves had had to make the Slytherin sixth year boys’ dormitory a new door.  There had been a lot of charring, and Evan didn’t know if Severus even _knew_ if he could control the voltage.  

Evan wasn’t made of even naked oak.

“I wouldn’t call it a spell,” Severus grated.  “ _What did he do to you._ ”

“He didn’t _do_ anything to me,” Evan said evenly.  “He gave me a job.”

“Lightning is electricity,” Severus said flatly, eyes burning.  “Electricity disrupts magic.  You didn’t hear me.  You barely saw me.  You didn’t hear _me._ ”

“It was an _interesting assignment_ ,” Evan told him, possibly just a bit more emphatically than evenly.  “If you thought I was under a compulsion, you could have used a finite.  You didn’t have to destroy my sketches!”  

He supposed there might have been one.  Wandless magic existed, and so did silent magic, and the accidental magic children did was both.  He wouldn’t have had to remember being put under a compulsion for it to have happened, although he couldn’t imagine why Voldemort would have bothered.  

He also couldn’t care very much right now.  He didn’t know whether Severus could control the voltage, or knew whether he could.  That flash of light that had filled his vision had been _green_.  

Severus might be strange and morbid enough that the thought of Evan killing him quickly and painlessly and by surprise made him happy, but Evan could only feel sick and weak and shaking.  All he could think about was the terrible spiral that could so easily happen if Severus reached for him at night and he flinched.

He was terrified that he might flinch.  He hadn’t been afraid of being hurt, back out there on the grass.  But for Severus to threaten him—even to shake him back to life—to threaten him with the loss of all his senses, of all feeling.  Even his boggart wasn’t that frightening, because it was Severus that he used to smile his boggart away.

“They were disturbing.”

He very deliberately placed his palms on the sofa on either side of himself, and took in a long breath.    “They were supposed to be disturbing.  Being disturbing was the entire point!”

Severus’s face didn’t change—certainly not to regret what he’d done.  The only change was that his eyes actually managed to go even more incandescent with rage.  “For this,” he whispered, nearly strangled, his nimble, sensitive hands tautening into hard and homicidal talons.  “If for no other reason, for this.”

Evan just looked at him, his supply of patience and understanding at an all-time low.

“My craft,” Severus said, very low, shaking, “is easily perverted.  So easily corrupted.   _So_ easily.  So easily even muggles have known it for centuries.  So easily even muggles can _do_ it.  I knew he’d try.  I knew he _would_.  They would. I knew they’d make me.  But yours.  That anyone should force _filth_ into yours.  Should turn the work of _your hands_.”

Quite a lot of Evan’s anger wearily drained away.  “Oh, Severus,” he sighed helplessly, raising his hand to his temples, rubbing away the last swirls and eddies of it and the painful headachy dregs. Leaning back into the sofa, he forced the limp, scraggly, aching rags of his feelings into something like a smile, though he knew his tired eyes had stayed sad.  “You’re such a _samurai_.”

Severus didn’t answer him, except with a panicky little jolt forward, instantly contained, that proved he had no idea what Evan meant and was turning it, in his head, into something so self-scathing that Ev wouldn’t even have understood if he’d explained.

“Spike, I know how you feel, I _do,_ but just because we make a thing, just because,” he trailed off, groping.  “Just because we’re its creators, just because, because creation is magic and we’re part of that, I know that you… I know you feel like there’s a weight to that as well as a… but it doesn’t…”  He turned his palms up on his thighs, wanting Spike to come to him, even if a part of him wasn’t ready just yet, was still quailing.  He didn’t _want_ to flinch.  He wouldn’t let it in.  “Sweetheart,” he appealed, “you can’t live like there are eyes in every shadow—”

“Even if there are?” Severus asked, miserably trying for droll, his own spines and snarls collapsing like dry sand in the ebb and wake of Evan’s tight civility.

“ _Even if there are,,_ Spike. And you can’t treat every rock and every scribble and piece of doggerel like it’s got a soul with integrity that has to be respected.  Spike, they _don’t_.  Spike, my dad’s been telling him to use me more, and this is a job _that isn’t the job they made Reggie do_.  This is good, and there’ll be ways to take advantage of it if we aren’t stupid.”

“It’s _your art,_ ” Severus underlined stormily.  “It’s not whether the individual pieces are good, by any definition of that word.  It’s whether the process itself is kept free of shame.”

Evan, who had never seen any particular use in shame to begin with, tried to think of how to say what he wanted to say without badmouthing Evans.  Or, if not her now, her insistence at school that there were no other approaches to anything but to embrace it or decry it in full voice from the rooftops.  Which might have been less currently controversial, but would have brought up more old, bruised feelings.

In the end, he settled on, “I don’t see any need to be ashamed, Spike.  Saying no would be stupid, sabotage would be stupid, but there’s an advantage to the side we want to advance built right into the job as described. _What he wants_ gives us an advantage. We don’t even _have_ to do anything stupid.  The only reason to be ashamed would be if I didn’t capitalize on it, or if I threw a fit and threw the opportunity away.”

“It’s _your art,_ ” Severus repeated, his eyes anguished in a hollow face.

“It’s not my medium?” Evan suggested.  He didn’t think it would help, and it clearly didn’t.  Instead, more firmly, he tried, “Spike, I’m not going to let you have tea with Evans on your own any more if you come away thinking it’s not allowed to be a _Slytherin_ samurai.”

“It’s not,” Spike quipped with an attempt at insouciance, instead of pointing out that it was Ev who’d had his arm twisted into a very upsetting cuppa with Miss Earnestine.  “Samurai and ninja are entirely mutually exclusive.”   The act might have worked better if the anger hadn’t, in his case, left the shakes to fend for themselves, along with fear and a sort of woundedness that wasn’t anything like hurt feelings.

Evan thought he’d better not answer that remark, given that it wasn’t just Severus’s hands that were trembling but, ever-so-faintly, his mouth.  Evan had not hurt his feelings.  Evan did not, himself, feel cut at all, but here was Severus in front of him, bleeding.

Keeping silent, keeping his hands more or less still in their welcome, seemed to have been a wise decision, although the results were rather more upsetting than being yelled at or even having his sketches cursed.  Severus took a hesitant step towards him, and then another, and then dropped to bury his face in Evan’s lap.

“Stoppit, Spike,” Evan said softly, laying a gentle hand on the back of his neck.

The _no_ that made it up to him was muffled.

“I’m still mad at you,” Evan informed him.  “You made me think you aimed a killing curse in my direction. Within a foot of my _face_.  You did it on purpose, Naj.”

Severus looked up at him.  He was still very white.  “You were gone,” he said, his jaw set again.  “You hadn’t come back.  “You were gone and you were _cold_.  It was worse than summers at school.  You’d been gone less than an hour and you came back gone from me.  What am I _for_?”

“You’re not _for_ what you can do for me, or anyone,” Evan told him, annoyed and exasperated, and then told his instant offended glare, “no matter what Mum says.”

“ _I_ say,” Spike further glowered at him, mulishly.  “ _My_ hearth.   _Mine_.”

Evan tried—really, _very hard_ —not to melt.  Horrible, dangerous, life-threatening behavior should not be encouraged.  Knowing he was fighting a losing battle, he suggested, “You could have just slapped me, you know.”

“Wouldn’t have worked,” Severus declared, sitting back and looking at him with a challenging tilt to his head.  Because Spike absolutely _was_ a smug git.  He wasn’t git enough to smile, though.  He didn’t even seem to want to: was being a git, yes, but one as tired and sad as Evan felt behind the stubborn set of his chin, not smug at all.  He was just sure he was right.

Evan sighed again, but just to himself this time.  “Because you thought whatever compulsion he might have had on me was stronger than that?”

Spike scoffed, standing, and offered him a hand by which to be pulled up.  “Because you’re Slytherin, Lance.  Why would anything throw you hard enough to work well enough twice?”

Halfway up, Evan let himself turn into dead weight, eyes narrowing.  “And exactly where do you think flattery is going to take you, Severus Prince-Snape?” he demanded.

Severus curled in, hauling him further up, nearly nose to nose.  “I’ll go where I choose, Schwarzrosiger, thank you.”

“And where would that be?” he asked, since it seemed to be expected.

Spike let his free hand open.  A long band of thick, plush,  charcoal-colored velvet unrolled.  “Shall I surprise you?”

The blindfold wasn’t even on and suddenly Evan was alive to the slide of his clothes on him, the smoky crackling of the fire, the tempting, earthy smell of bread warming.  Severus’s hand in his was all strength and skin dutifully maintained like the precious tool it was, stretched over the prickly, anxious, fervent, ferocious magic that Evan wanted to carry cradled inside his bones, a tonic more clean and fresh by far than the sluggish black sap of his marrow.

(Even when Spike was being a complete set of horse’s hindquarters, Ev acknowledged to himself ruefully, overly dramatic swishy tail most decidedly included.  Or at least, probably far more quickly afterwards than would make other people sanguine about Evan’s mental health.  But it was Spike who’d used the word ‘codependent’ first, all the way back in fifth year, so that was probably all right.  

Besides, it wasn’t as if either of them had ever had any mental health to begin with.  Or were even likely to be able to make a positive identification if anyone asked for an introduction.  So there you were.)

“I think you owe me a _lovely_ surprise,” Evan decided, letting Severus pull him up and in.  That was fair, and it might stop him letting the wrong sort of connections settle in his head.  This last surprise Severus had given him, even if it had been needed (they’d probably never know) had been… terrible.  

It had been particularly unkind considering that Severus kept on insisting and _insisting_ that they didn’t know for sure that portraits worked the way they all believed (hoped), didn’t know at all that the people in portraits had feeling the way people with nerves did.  Evan had always believed that he was sure, and it was _horrific_ to find out how afraid he was that Severus was right  

At least this time he’d kept his hands on the couch, and hadn’t punched his heart in his mouth.  He added reproachfully, “A foot from my _face_ , Spike.”

“Damn the torpedoes,” his cobra said flatly, cupping his face with fingers like feathers, or flames.  “ _Whatever works._ ”

* * *

[1] Not only is this translation of Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules (Fowls) my own, I am taking a bit of a liberty with this paragraph/passage to try and compensate for starting in the middle of the middle. It would more properly read, ‘The one increasèd all my fears,’ and I also put in the ‘gloomy.’ You really need the preceding two verses, but I thought there was probably a limit, no matter how appropriate…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : Igor Karkaroff probably only even got this crappy job babysitting spoiled English tourists because his mom is scary beyond all reason. (But most likely he does not eat bugs.)


	22. Lyulyak Lodge, Bulgaria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Igor Karkaroff probably only even got this crappy job babysitting spoiled English tourists because his mom is scary beyond all reason. (But most likely he does not eat bugs.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : Character-bashing. I don't like to do it, but when I give a chapter to a character for narration, it is from that character's POV, not mine.
> 
>  **Notes** : Winners from last chapter's minigame are: Plutoplex on ffnet, whose in-progress Crossing Lines I strongly recommend although one character in particular may deeply creep out some readers of this fic (including me, but in a way I think is awesome, for the record), and on AO3, Eilinel, melodysister, and lurker2209. Not everybody chose to ask questions, so I was able to put what we do have at the end of the chapter without feeling like there was more omake than chapter.
> 
> For the record: the title 'The Maiden and the Hag' primarily referenced the optical illusion with the young woman and the stereotypical wart-type!witch, but I also gleefully accepted answers of 'those 3D eye puzzles where you had to cross your eyes to see more than static' and references to Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, or The Wife of Bath's Tale.

When Igor had asked that morning, in his most affable manner, "And where shall we be going today, my friends?" there had been no reason for him not to expect an easy and a pleasant day.

On nearly every other day of this assignment, the so-sleek Englishman and his fuzzy hair either did not wait in the hall for Igor in the morning because after the first day he was able to take himself the National Magical Assembly in the great castle of Ustra without help, or he asked Igor to bring him to the estates of such noble and official wizards as Igor might, at this point in his career, if he met them in certain circumstances, hope to greet with a respectful half-bow without being demoted to tea-boy. Rosy and his paint-box would spend great portions of the day closeted together with such people, and then Igor would be called for.

At this time, he would ask to be taken either to the most beautiful place Igor had not shown him yet—in which case he would either instruct that Igor go at once to sit outside whatever door his companion was within until called for, and then deliver him—or ask to be taken to some new outdoor marketplace. On these occasions, he did not have the sense to keep Igor by him for safety, but nevertheless he had never yet complained of having all his gold stolen, or even of being cheated. It was, of course, most likely that he did not know how much he was being cheated.

Igor had once tried dutifully to stay by him anyway, and to haggle on his behalf. Finally, he had argued the witch down to a good price for the tablecloth that Rosy wanted. It was a price that Rosy should have been happy with, because it was not a good tablecloth, even if the lace must have taken the woman's very young daughter a long time to make as she practiced on it, because that was Igor's idea about how the ugly thing had been made.

But Rosy had not been standing next to him, waiting in grateful appreciation like a good tourist. Rosy had been half the table away, not buying the tablecloth at all but paying the witch's old mother a very high price that was not cheating him for a very good set of intricate gossamer window curtains, having them wrapped for owl-travel in bad weather, lying through his too-perfect teeth to the old lady about his dear mother-in-law who made lace for her own family back in England and would be in love with the old witch's wonderful art. But there was no such mother-in-law to love this lace, because Rosy was not married.

In the early days of April, Igor had been given the assignment to be the guide of a group of young ladies from the Salem Witch's Institute who were spending a week in Bulgaria as part of a 'study abroad' program that their American nation-state encouraged. Of course, they could not have the 'exchange program' with Durmstrang that the American nation-states kept trying to negotiate for with European wizarding nations, but Bulgaria was happy to let them visit the country in a more informal way.

While he had been their guide, Igor had heard many American words with which the translating spell had not been able to help him. Some of them he had been able to make sense of on his own, some not. When the girls had made a certain face behind the back of the Bulgarian Ambassador to Magical North America and called him a word the spell did not know, Igor had not felt that he needed them to explain.

Igor thought that Rosy might be this such of a 'sleaze.' Only a fool smiled all the time, as everyone knew, but to be a fool was not the same as to have a heart of gold.

However, Igor's usual day did not have to begin with the spoiled young nobleman's high-handedness. The other, the hard and lithe one with the eyes of ice and coals, he woke hours earlier. Igor thought perhaps he did not eat in the morning, for he always shared his coffee with Igor and did not offer him food, but instructed the innkeeper to bring up a breakfast tray to the room at a certain time as he and Igor left. The tray was always gone by the time Rosy called for Igor, but Snap did not arrange for food for two in any case.

Snap did not ask to be taken to the sort of person that Igor's office called important, as Rosy did. He spoke to many lowly sorts of people who had respect among those who knew them and who needed their craft. He told Igor that Igor did not need to stay with him and the potion makers, but Igor stayed—not outside the door, but inside with Snap—when he spoke to the teachers and to the apothecaries. Snap said that no one but a brewer could translate between brewers, but also said it was as well to have someone to prevent misunderstandings when Snap spoke to other sorts of people.

Igor was not sure how useful he had been to Snap in this way. Snap seemed to expect everyone to take offense at strange times. As the days went on, Igor did notice that these were the points in a conversation at which Rosy would say something soft and dishonest, like oil, just as the Ambassadors to English-speaking nations did. But Snap only spoke straightforwardly, as anyone might, except that sometimes he flinched after he had spoken his mind and then people blinked at him and asked if he had been stung by a bee.

Still, sometimes there was a custom or a turn of phrase that being able to understand Bulgarian words with magic did not help Snap with, as it so often went with tourists. In this Igor could help him, for he often noticed Snap looking only just a tiny blink of blank where Snap's hosts did not, even many of the teachers, and of course he was more practiced in explaining these things to foreigners.

It was also so that Snap asked many questions about Igor's childhood with great interest, for Igor had been to school at Durmstrang. Snap did not ask to be taken to the school, was not interested in the way it was built or any such of its secrets, or even what spells and magics were taught there. So Igor did not have to tell him no, he could not answer.

Snap only wanted to know what it had been like for Igor to live there, to sit in classrooms and be taught with teachers ruling over him, to sit at tables and sleep in rooms with other children, to strive against them and work together with them. He wanted to know about the teachers that Igor had thought were good at the time, and bad, and if he still thought so, and what the teachers had done to make him think this way.

He was interested in the way Igor's teachers had spoken to his parents and written to them. When Igor, who had not been privy to these conversations, offered to introduce Snap to his parents so Snap could ask them these questions in person, Snap was most interested in the samovar that had come down to his mother from many generations, and did not tell her that her banitsa was bad, even though even Igor would admit—only to himself—that it was very bad, always burned and almost as greasy as the kind from a shop, and he had never seen Snap eat a pastry when he had another choice.

This was not Mama's fault. When igor was a child and before he was born, no one had the time for making pastries, even if there was clean flour. Mama had had other things to do with her wand and her bread knife. Still, her baking was very bad. Igor was ashamed to give his guest such cooking—although not to give anyone his mother's cooking!

But Snap did not tell her it was bad, even with his face. He asked how the cheese was made, and when Mama said the banitsa was too greasy, he said that where he was from a child was very lucky to get greasy fried fish and potatoes once in a month, although in some parts of the town it was a Friday treat, and they put a vinegar made from malt on it and ate it out of a newspaper. He gave Mama a recipe for this vinegar. It was in German, not Bulgarian, but this was not so hard to have translated as English would have been.

Igor had pleasant and interesting days on this assignment, except for those short moments when Rosy needed to be moved to certain places, and at those times when Rosy asked for him to bring Snap to where Rosy was and then Snap sometimes forgot that Igor was there without saying goodnight.

Most of the times, in fact.

Rosy was, Igor would give him this, very good at placing himself so as to make a striking picture against the beautiful places to which Igor had brought him, in front of the exact spot he knew Snap would appear.

Igor supposed that perhaps if a painter could not manage to create a dramatic scene from the most beautiful places in Bulgaria, which was the most beautiful place on Earth even in its dreariest muggle areas, important people would not wish to be painted by him. It was, Igor supposed, the least that should be expected.

He had pleasant and interesting days, and the very fact that he was asking them both at once how this day would go was proof that it might be different, but he could not have known how very different it would be.

The reason he was asking them both at once was that Snap had not called for him at dawn, as Snap usually did. Igor did not go before Snap called him, but he called every day at their room at the inn at ten, whether he was sitting with Snap and some teacher or apothecary or Snap had let him go so that Snap could spend all day waving his limber hands excitedly while talking a hundred kilometers to the hour with some potion-maker, usually in such classical Greek that Igor's translation spell sounded as if it had been badly miscast.

Usually, when he called at ten, either Rosy would have stuck a flower in the keyhole to tell Igor that Rosy had gone alone to Ustra, or Rosy would be waiting in the hallway with his paint box, leaning against the hall with a polite and patient look that said to Igor that Igor was late, although Igor never was.

Today, Rosy had not been there for Igor to see, but neither had the flower. So Igor had knocked, and after a pause, Snap had said, without opening the door, that Igor might come in.

When Rosy posed against the evening for Snap, it was in Igor's opinion the very least show he could make of Snap's importance to him. The Englishers had a very good word for their young men like Rosy, which was 'lackadaisical.' It was perhaps more descriptive of them than _vyal_ or even _otpusnat,_ because it would not allow you to say it quickly. Caring enough to spend a moment, with no preparation, to make an impression, it did not make him worthy of even a lowlier wizard than himself who was both more intelligent than he and a gentleman.

This lackadaisical person who could be very nearly bothered to strike a pose was not the Rosy in Snap's room with him. The Rosy that Igor knew was a sleek fellow, for all his fluffy hair, with dapper shoes that never committed either of the usual English-wizard sins of being stubby and pockmarked or slavishly copying the Italians. He seemed to have a hundred caped waistcoats to make him look warm and friendly or something like a cool breeze, and Igor had not realized before that they all made him also look smaller.

He realized now because Rosy was curled into Snap's lap on the inn's sofa in front of a cold hearth, and Rosy did not quite fit. He was the taller, and when he did not wear his soft-armed shirts, Igor became suddenly and uneasily aware that he was more powerfully built in the chest and shoulders than Igor would have thought a painter needed to be.

Although Snap's gaze at Igor was chilly as he tugged Rosy's thin green dressing gown higher and farther closed with no help from Rosy, it was not what disturbed Igor. He did not expect Snap to be one to change in himself before something was changed for him.

What showed Igor that things might not be as he had thought was Rosy's face, which had barely noticed that Igor had come in, just as Snap sometimes forgot to say goodnight. Rosy looked doubly shaken, even shattered.

Igor had, as it was said, 'been to Sofia,' and Rosy had the look of a man who had just had his first night with the veela. But Igor also knew many old men who had fought in the war about Grindelwald. Rosy was clinging to Snap not only as if Snap was himself a veela (to find that bloodline in Snap would not be unexpected; his nose had something of the beak about it), but as if Snap had pulled Rosy out of the path of a disemboweling curse that had spattered the man behind him into a stinking puddle before his eyes.

And yet, Igor had read the morning paper. Furthermore, since Snap had not called him, he had gone to the office and had coffee with everyone else waiting for an assignment, or waiting for their assignments to call for them, or writing their reports. All had been quiet all night, as far as anyone knew. Poliakoff had mentioned his wife complaining about the Albanians flooing in very late almost without notice to accuse a Bulgarian apothecary of cursing one of their major fig groves after a dispute about either ripeness or wasps, Poliakoff had not been certain. That was all.

So it had just been a thing that had happened between Snap and Rosy. So Igor, as an Embassy guide, was not intended to consider it his business even if he was most curious, and even if he thought it likely to have an effect on the remainder of his time with them And so he asked, in his most affable manner, as though nothing was strange, "And where shall we be going today, my friends?"

"Can't we just stay in?" Rosy asked, turning his face away from Igor and into Snap's chest. Snap, too, was wearing a dressing grown, a richly blue one with, of all things, a white boar on one shoulder, and Rosy's fingers had curled in it. Unlike Rosy, though, the modest Snap had a shirt on beneath. "Just once?"

"No," Snap said. Since he was on the job, Igor did not smile to hear such a firm refusal given, however gently, to one so spoiled. "Or, rather, I expect we will, but not today. It's time, I think."

Rosy stilled and then sat up, and annoyed Igor with his stomach. However, if Igor was less exercised, at least he could make a better showing it came to the hair of his front. If Rosy was so deficient, then perhaps he had no beard because it too would be wispy and insignificant. As a potion-maker, Snap would not be clean-shaven for the same reason but only for safety; no doubt he was manly enough behind his black shirt.

Unsettling Igor further, Rosy's ever-bleary pondwater eyes became suddenly clear and curious as they honed in on Snap's face. "That was sudden," he remarked, and just as suddenly he sounded neither pathetic and whining nor half-asleep.

Igor took half a step back before he recovered himself.

Snap's alert black gaze darted to him, and Snap very nearly smiled, which was as close to a smile as one saw with Snap. As these near-smiles went, this was a sly one, an invitation to share a joke. Igor did not understand this joke, but a word that came into his mind was 'sparkling.'

Snap did not speak to him, though, but to Rosy. He said, "Much as I dislike the reason, I think you can handle it now."

Rosy's dull-colored eyebrows slid up. It was almost, but not, the lackadaisical Rosy that Igor knew who mused, "Shall I ask first what makes the obvious the reason, or why you decided I couldn't handle it in the first place?"

The difference was this: in the usual way that the usual Rosy might have said those words, or another young English wizard of his class, if Igor had spoken in that way as a child, his mother would have slapped him. This was a Rosy who was used to his friend Snap acting in this way, and had years ago taken on a friend's duty to remind Snap that he was mortal and not king.

Snap shrugged, and told Rosy, "When you talked about it before to that Auror, you started salivating about skin tones and like that."

"Oh, _that_ 'it's time,'" Rosy commented, still listening, as though something had become clear.

"Yes. Whether or not I'm 'for' what I can do for anyone in particular—"

At this point Igor started forward, because Rosy had made an indignant grumbling noise and elbowed him very hard, but Snap only smirked and went on.

"We had, I believe, agreed that at the very least it's advisable that I sit on you when you're…" Here Snap paused, eyed Igor, and clearly said something other than what he had begun to say. "When your interests getting the better of you seems like an extraordinarily terrible idea."

"That's not exactly what we agreed," Rosy said, in a slow and droll voice that was more his own than what he had been using so far that morning. "I do take your meaning, but I think you might be overreacting, S—you know."

"I think not," Snap said, at once definite and thoughtful. "I've been considering it. We don't know as much about them as other species, other than what has and hasn't worked as weaponry, but we do know that they're predators, and we know what is common in predators. Prey animals are more likely to survive if they have a wide field of vision, predators if they have binocular vision and can judge distance, if their attention is alerted by movement."

Rosy looked thoughtful, and then looked startled and afraid as his gaze shot to the window. Igor's eyes jerked to it in alarm.

There was absolutely nothing but sky, trees, and rooftops to be seen through the window. When Igor looked at Rosy again, he had pressed Snap into the corner of the sofa and was kissing him as though the only air in the room was in Snap's mouth. It was only a moment; he seemed to be trying to finish before Igor turned back around. He had perhaps not counted on Igor being able to see them in the glass.

Igor decided that the gift of the breathless, aching, helpless gladness in the split second before Snap returned his face to its cool English impassivity was one that Igor would wrap up to enjoy for himself later. Of course it was not meant for him, but it had not been kept from him very hard. "Is there something wrong?" he asked, turning back to them. "I don't see anything."

"Oh, sorry, my eyes were ambushed," Rosy said, looking embarrassed, "but it was probably just something like a raven. Or maybe a black swan, you have those here, don't you, Karkaroff?"

"You are _ridiculous,_ " Snap informed him, color rising in his pale cheeks.

With hot eyes, Rosy purred, "But am I absurd?"

"Certainly," Snap agreed with a scornful sniff, his arm tightening. "I might go so far as to say _daft._ "

Rosy snuggled in as though being insulted were all he could wish, and said magnanimously, "But you were saying, about predators?"

"That the successful ones, which is to say, the ones whose species thrive—don't make me thump you," he threatened Rosy. Igor silently agreed that Rosy looked likely to crawl into Snap's face again. He appreciated this warning, for his own part. "The successful ones have senses that are particularly keyed to help them pick out their prey. _Their_ prey, successfully. Birds of prey being outrageously farsighted and able to pick out small, well-camouflaged animals at distances that would stagger human vision and so on."

"Don't make me make you thump me," Rosy threatened, smiling.

Snap's mouth quirked a bit. "Well, consider. In the predator-prey relationship under consideration, if the predator wanted to find the easiest possible target, what would it look for?"

Rosy tilted his head. As he had not bound back his hair for the day, this resulted in far more ostentatious Anglo-Saxon sunshiny gleaming than was, Igor considered, in any way necessary. "Solo target, few connections, appearance of not being well, er, groomed…?"

"No, you're thinking like a human," Snap corrected him. "You're thinking like a human sort of criminal predator who'd like to avoid being caught, or at least to avoid being punished in any meaningful way. Put yourself in the mind of a predator's looking for food and isn't interested in the social behavior or connections or consequences attached to the prey animal. Don't think about what's smart. Think about what's _easy_."

Rosy did think, and after a moment he began to look discomfited. He shook his head, and said with a note of stubbornness, "Not following, S—Snape."

Snap looked down at him with affectionate skepticism. "Yes, you are."

Shaking his head again, Rosy said, "No, I… I have a picture, but I don't _have it,_ if you see what I mean."

"Of course you have a picture," Snap murmured. At speaking volume, he asked, "What's the picture?"

Rosy wagged his shoulders in a so-and-so sideways motion against Snap's chest, which Igor considered to be showing off. "Sort of… snakes and baby birds, which as we know doesn't actually happen—"

"It certainly doesn't," Snap agreed, rolling his eyes.

"And that time in, what was it, fourth year? When you made Bagman wet his pants."

"I did _not_ make him wet hi—for pity's _sake,_ " Snap growled. "It's not as if I hexed the idiot."

Rosy grinned, and now _he_ was inviting Igor to share a joke Igor didn't understand, which was much stranger. "No, you just threw him against a wall and hissed at him."

"I didn't _throw_ him against the wall. Anyway, he tried to cheat off my exam," Snap said sulkily. "He deserved it."

"He certainly did," Rosy agreed, and squeezed him soothingly around the back of the neck. "Anyway, that's the picture I have. Are you thinking about the smelling fear thing?"

"No, although it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Smelling fear is useful because it allows a predator to track prey that's running away. But suppose, Evan, that… The myth about snakes is, of course, merely a combination of lidless eyes having a certain quality to them and prey species sometimes having an instinctive freeze reaction to a threat, rather than to fight or flee. Suppose, though, that in a particular species that is preyed upon, some of the members are, for whatever reason, entranced, or let us say _fascinated,_ or even vulnerable to _becoming_ fascinated, by the predatory species, or its specific members."

There was a brief silence, during which the two looked at each other. Igor could not read Rosy's expression, except that there was something taken from behind and something reluctant in its suddenly still waters. He could read Snap's easily, for Snap was communicating pointedness very strongly, but Igor did not know what he meant by it.

"…Mm," Rosy grunted, eventually.

With the look and in the voice of a man who suspected that his audience would pretend not to understand him if given the least opportunity, Snap pressed at him, "A successful predatory species would develop senses to detect prey fascination. A successful culture of predators would develop propaganda to encourage it, behavior to feed into that propaganda and capitalize on it. A successful culture of predators _who had been hunted to endangerment_ , Evan, would learn to _fear_ fascination, and to eliminate its sources before they could gather or disseminate information about them."

Rosy looked at him uneasily. Igor thought that Rosy looked as if he wanted to protest, but wasn't exactly certain of how to do it. Igor still didn't know what they were talking about.

"No," Snap answered Rosy's silence as if he had spoken after all. "I don't know what we're dealing with. Which is rather the point, isn't it? We don't know. We _don't_ know, but Moody was right, it's a dangerous proposition even without complicating factors. With them, I mislike the odds. Insofar as they're calculable. Which they're not. I'm not stupid enough to go in without backup, Evan, but your state of mind wasn't encouraging."

"I do not know where you wish to go," Igor put in, "but the Balkan Embassy will extend more security than even," he put his hand over his heart and gave a half-bow, "a capable guide, within reason, should it be needed. Your Ministry was most clear that we should be prepared for such a request."

"And a trained defense specialist who knows the region in question well might well be most welcome," Snap replied, more smoothly than was his wont. "But while such assistance would know the area and might be able to predict the danger, they would not be my _eaxlgestealla_ ; they could not predict _me_."

Igor frowned as Rosy's face changed in another way he could not read. He couldn't read Rosy's face, but Rosy suddenly did not look small at all, or as if his soft, sleek, tailored clothes would suit him. "I beg your pardon, Snap," Igor said, although he was having some difficulty seeing Snap past the Rosy who was sitting on him, now that Rosy had straightened and stopped curling his shoulders in. "My translation spell does not know this word."

"No," Snap agreed, simply and unhelpfully, and Igor thought there was a smile in his voice if there was not one on his face. "No, it wouldn't."

"Dead language, Karkaroff, your spell's fine, I shouldn't worry," Rosy assured him absently, sliding off of Snap into the other corner of the sofa, the better to gaze at him as if he were some sort of a puzzle, or a sunrise to be painted. "You said my state of mind _wasn't_ encouraging?"

"Well, you have a new toy, now, don't you," Snap asked him sourly. "I should bring your sketchbook along and work on it while I negotiate, if I were you."

Rosy sighed. "As things I might have been set to go, it could be _so_ much worse, S—Snape. You do realize."

"Evan. First, you were just _sitting on me._ I appreciate the effort, but under the circumstances, really. I think we may take it as read that Karkaroff understands we are on a first-name basis." Rosy's nose made the scratchy noise of having a laugh inside of it, although he did Igor the courtesy of trying to trap it there. Igor, in return, did him the courtesy of pretending to have heard none of this. Snap surged ahead, perhaps, Igor thought from looking at his face, wishing to get past it as quickly as possible. "Second, do you understand how… how _rust_ works? I'm sure we've been through this."

Rosy looked exasperated. "No, I do know what you mean, but what I don't know is what you expect me to do about it."

"Just… be aware," Snap said, his eyes gone starkly naked in a way that Igor had to look away from, as he had not looked away from them in the window. "We do what we must, but we do it _because_ we must, for the reasons we stepped onto the path to begin with. Not because we allow some joy the path can tempt us with to consume us. We remember not only who we are, not only what we want, but what these sticky stones we tread are made of. We remember that the warm aroma of ambergris is nothing more than whale bile, and that although the whale's body wants to be rid of it, when we have it, it's more usually because human greed killed the damn whale."

Igor did not mind this. It was sometimes difficult for him to follow Snap's conversation when they visited the apothercaries, as well. Igor did not understand how ambergris and whales had come into the conversation, but this was what speaking with Snap was like. At times, it was necessary to simply accept that one had become lost, and begin to look for the new landmarks.

Or, when Igor was very lost, to ask for directions. Igor would not allow a tourist to see him do this when it came to travel, but as a translator of culture it was not permitted to be so proud. "But what is this danger, my friends?" he asked. "Please, you must forgive me. After all this speaking of these animals and those, I do not think you are wishing to visit the Zoopark or the Zoo Sofia, yes?"

"Correct," Snap nodded sharply. "Not a zoo, and not in Sofia. Not in Bulgaria at all, in fact. Your Embassy's remit extends through all the Balkan states. Yes?"

"It is so," Igor agreed proudly. "Although of course Bulgaria is the greatest and the most beautiful, and all throughout the mountains the children come to Durmstrang to learn."

"Quite," Rosy agreed, with his eyelids lowered and in that murmuring tone he used when he was agreeing like an Englisher, without agreeing at all.

"Not currently the point at issue," Snap said, rolling his eyes. Igor thought this eye-rolling was for them both, and so it pleased him, because one did not expect a foreigner to have enough understanding to agree that Bulgaria was the most beautiful of all nations, even an intelligent foreigner. He had not been brought up to see things in the proper manner; one could explain matters patiently but it was of no use to blame him for being foolish in this way. "The point is that you, or this within-reason Embassy security you mention or both, can guide and guard us within Romania."

Igor had been working at the Embassy for nearly a year now, and so he did not say _Romania, bah!_ and spit on the ground. As a good guide, he said, "It can of course be done, Snap. What do you wish to see, in Romania?"

Rosy sighed with a face of resignation, and said in the gloomiest of voices, "Vampires."

Igor wondered whether, if he should go back to the Embassy at once and turn in his resignation, his mother would tell all the women of the village that he was a coward, or only beat him like a child.

* * *

* * *

**Prizes!**

_All questions are answered by the characters. Their veracity, civility, and sanity are answered for by no one._

**Plutoplex:** If you could only be proficient in one spell, which spell would you pick? I'll ask Dumbledore and Severus.

Albus: Why, I think I should have to choose one which would bring peace into people's hearts. Although one should never underestimate the power of a wonderful cup of hot tea, or a favorite sweet, or a gift of hand-knitted socks from a caring relative in winter...

Severus: ...And let's by no means examine when one might _choose_ to bring peace into the hearts of others, or how _much_ peace, no indeed. Let's just _assume_ that we're bringing it only when they're sad, and not when they're attempting to sort out a pressing and difficult moral quandary, or are justly angry, or uncomfortable because we've suggested they do something they know damn well they don't want to do. Let's just _assume_ that 'bringing peace into the heart' is a temporary effect that leaves the heart capable of feeling other things later, that leaves the mind intact, that is not, in fact, simply a metaphor for death...

Albus: Now, Severus, you do me a disservice there.

Severus: Note at which point he protests.

Albus: I protested at the point where you seemed to be winding down, my dear boy. I assure you, I've no wish to interrupt! As well as being rude, it would deprive me of the pleasure of watching you debate. And you were asked, yourself, you know.

Severus: I don't understand the question. What counts as a spell? Are potions spells? What about runic engravements and arrays? A better argument for them can be made than for potions, but the distinction becomes distinctly fuzzy when we venture into the realms of Transfiguration. And then, when we consider those Dark Arts which aren't black magic, they almost by definition aren't spells as the term is usually defined, but informal and unstructured expressions of will, imagination, and innate power...

Albus: (leans back in his chair and knits happily)

Evan: (in a stage whisper) (points at Albus) Persuasion that feels like safety. (points at Severus) Confusion that feels like conviction. (Flashes a peace sign and curls up for a nap)

Severus: ...Says the Greek Chorus who looks like a Viking fop.

Evan: See? Conviction that looks like confusion! I'm on _your_ side, Spike! :D :D :D

Severus: ...

 **Melodyssister:** My first question, basically to everyone in the older generation: Why are they not saying out loud that Lord Voldemort is Tom Riddle? If Evan has already worked out that there is something fishy going on, surely he's not the only one? This is something that really bothered me in canon, and I'd be very interested to read your explanation.

_A/N: I feel like I forgot something in between when I read this question and when I actually wrote the answers to it.  So.. in case I ever remember that, don't hold me to these?  Especially to what his admiring Slytherin classmates say... n,n;;;_

Darius: When a fellow goes to all the trouble of having his name legally changed and obliviating the clerks and stealing all the records and not setting fire to them until they're well out of Ministry sensor range, it's only decent to go along with it, even if it does make conversations a touch cumbersome.

Abraxas: It gets rather painful when one forgets. And I don't merely mean the initial chilly silence.

Walburga: Why would anyone mention that jumped up mudblood under any name? It would only give him an exaggerated idea of his own importance, and he needs no help in that department.

Minerva: You must be joking, and I must say that it's in very poor taste. Poor Tom never came back from his trip to Europe, and just because we never found out what had happened to him is no reason to besmirch his name. In retrospect, I wonder if we shouldn't have tried harder to dissuade little Quin Quirrell when he wanted to go, but he was _so_ excited about doing better at DADA in his second year—not to mention the alehouse tour, or whatever he called it. He was almost more excited about that, I think, to tell you the truth; he couldn't even see how icy Severus got every time he wanted to talk about German beer, and he was usually quite a sensitive lad.

Filius: (coughs) You see how it is. Riddle was quite a popular boy; if he was content to bury his old reputation along with his given name, who were we to argue?

 **Melodyssister:** Second, and more frivolous: What do the various characters smell in Amortentia?

Lily: Well, I can smell that sort of hot-summer-on-grass-sunshine, smell, only not hay, but—

Severus: If Miss Granger had answered that question in _my_ class, in a year when she _knew_ herself to be surrounded by enemies—and not merely potential spies, but enemies in that very room with her, enemies both known by her to be opportunistic themselves and very strongly suspected of having sound familial connections to more bloodthirsty enemies yet—

Horace: Now, _really,_ Severus, what possible harm—

Severus: IN A YEAR when the Ministry had already begun putting its nearly useless broadsides whose _sole_ useful point was to remind people that their best screen against imposters is intimate knowledge! If she'd given up such personal information in my class, with our without prompting, I would have—

Lily: Docked her twenty points?

Severus: Given her a detention for stupidity, and docked her _fifty_ points as a fee for my having to obliviate the entire bloody class to keep her and her feckless twits of friends safe _again._

Lily: Evan, tell him he's being unreasonable.

Evan: (juggles satsumas/clementines and hums like no one has been talking the whole time)

Severus: You're using a levitation charm, you can't juggle.

Evan: It's still juggling if it's magic!

Lily and Severus: No, it's not.


	23. Innerspace (Bulgaria)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Severus contemplates mortality, earns an upgrade to his Gothboy badge, and gazes into the abyss commonly known as the Great hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Heroical apatheism (yeah, I had to look it up, too), morbidity, muggle-political references, and tooth-rotting fluff.
> 
>  **Notes** : For the new year (L'shana tova, everybody!), I probably ought to resolve to be snappier about updating. Instead, transparency. I swear, this is not a cunning plan to make loyal readers follow/subscribe. Rather, I have some emotionally exhausting RL fretting going on, and my beta reader is doing a thing that makes her crazy busy, and my job goes nuts around every holiday. These circumstances conspire, and it's hard to see either coming to an end soon in a way that would be good.
> 
> However, this is not a notice of imminent stoppage; all but one chapter of Act II/August is first-drafted and there is no risk of orphan fic. Just, I started posting this monster when I was working very part-time and able to churn out a chapter every 1-2 weeks and that is, clearly, no longer possible. But I think I really have to stop apologizing at the start of every chapter. vOv
> 
> (It's also not a plot to cadge comments etc, but as one can't set up a patrion page for fanwork, they are the best way to show support for a story and help the author stay excited about it. And tbh my morale is under such a generalized assault I've been driving the speed limit on the highway going home. n,n;;; Even the one-liners are smiles I keep, and the thoughtful ones make my day.)
> 
>  **Story notes** : This was one of the chapters where I couldn't jam quite all of the answers to my beta's questions into the prose, and so you'll get a snippet or two of discussion at the end.

To Severus's _extreme_ surprise, securing an interview with vampires was nearly as easy, in the end, as Karkaroff had promised whatever-they-wanted would be before hearing what it was, though not half so simple. 'Of course it can be done,' what nonsense. As if Severus was some happy-go-lucky Ravenclaw who thought it natural that the wheels of Scientific Progress might roll merrily on without being greased and shoved and ruts dragged down all the roads for them.

He agreed with their unspoken premise, of course. Since humans liked to consider that having brains raised them above all other species (never mind that, in the wizarding world, humans knew as a matter of experience if not awareness that many other species also had brains capable of sapience, reasoning, and complex emotion), it would be _rational_ for humans to celebrate thought and honor the explorers of questions at least as much as they did explorers of territory.

The premise was perfectly sound. It was the assumption that humans in large groups were capable of extended periods of rationality that was hopelessly naïve. Whether it was more or less naïve than the notion that anyone could accomplish anything without either some equivalent of Slughorn's pineapple baskets or a very large club was a question from which Severus winced.

Evan had wanted to Make Comments, later, about the way Karkaroff had choked _after_ hearing what he needed to arrange. As flattering and amusing as Ev's Karkarovian insanity was, however, Severus had been bound in justice to point out that if anyone else had choked on finding a task like that popping up in their to-do list, Evan would have sided with them at least enough to remark that Severus, in blindsiding them with it, had been rather unkind.

"But I wouldn't have sided with them really," Evan had argued. He'd looked a little offended, to Severus's mind. This was absurd, since it would have been quite true. Which, under the circumstances, made it rather difficult for Severus not to feel almost grovelingly grateful.

"No," Severus had agreed, more successful in managing his face than his feelings, which was a drearily common occurrence. "You would have understood that unkindly denying someone time in which to sabotage disagreeable but vital plans is occasionally necessary, especially when the plans are ultimately for everyone's benefit."

And Evan had paused, and gotten that funny, quirky _this will be good_ smile he sometimes spilled out all over Severus, and asked, "Your paper is for everyone's ultimate benefit?"

"Understanding unshakable viral curses is to everyone's ultimate benefit," Severus had reminded him, vexed. "If a process is developed wherein they _can_ be shaken, then the vampiric and lycanthropic conditions change from incurable diseases to either curable ones or life choices."

"You won't be happy until you've burnt the world down and cartwheeled all over the ashes," Evan had remarked, both slanderously and irrelevantly.

Severus could have considered that the use of such a fond tone and expression to accompany such a bizarre and uncharitable statement might well indicate clinical insanity. In fact he had to suspect that Evan was being either metaphorical or extremely Black at him.

Not being sure which it was but hoping for the former, he'd settled for, "I doubt I should cartwheel," which seemed to him to be suitably noncommittal and made Evan laugh.

He was trying hard not to try overly hard to make Evan laugh or otherwise be unusually nice to him. It was very clear to him that, after Evan had terrified him by being so unresponsive after meeting with the Dark Lord, he had not merely shocked Evan awake but actually frightened him.

He couldn't regret what he'd done: it was his responsibility to pull Evan back from numbness as surely as it was to feed them both. Which latter he felt possibly-inappropriately smug about: _he_ might be a hopeless case, but _Evan_ never looked pinched and pale.

Evan trusted Severus to jolt him awake when he was drifting— _had explicitly trusted him with the task_ —as staunchly as he relied on Evan to be an axis of easement at the center of the spiteful, spitting static of his world. He would never be sorry for doing what was obviously necessary.

Even when it turned out that he might have overshot slightly and created unfortunate side effects. He could certainly be sorry for, one might say, an error in dosage. He could, without any moral discomfort whatever, apologize for any mistake that had _been_ a mistake, and not a luckless exigency. And he could deeply regret it when, as now, he hadn't been able to think of a better solution. Of course he could. That was a _failure._

Even in the time since, though, he still hadn't been able to think of anything that might have worked better. Evan had suggested Severus should strike him with real force, as opposed to all the smiling swats they were wont to use between themselves instead of spoken speech, but Severus thought he might have vomited onto the rug before he'd even fully drawn his hand back.

Then again, _that_ might have served.

Then _again,_ Evan would probably yelled at him for even longer, if he'd forced himself into something that would have made him sick with himself. And, too, if it hadn't served, the nightmares would never have ended even if Ev had eventually surfaced on his own, or from some other effort of Severus's.

But it was one thing to make himself sick with something that reminded himself of home—no, of Spinner's Row—when Evan didn't mind it.

It would be another— _quite_ another—to frighten Evan and shake him and then fall into that disgusting _thing_ he'd seen a thousand times, not only in his own home by any means, where the men were a little more sober and a great deal more considerate and fawning for some short space of time after their wives started to wear their hair down or their sleeves long or, if they could afford it, their face powder heavy.

He'd given Evan the best treatment he could think of. He was guilty of nothing but misjudgment, or, more properly, he thought, of failing to anticipate a side effect. That was his responsibility, not his fault. He refused to insult Evan and discount him, belittle him, _diminish_ him, reduce him to a receptive subject, by suggesting that a second act could unmake a first one, could undo its effects.

He'd promised Evan and himself once that if Evan ever hit him in anger again, he'd hit back: that he wouldn't become his own mother. This hadn't been like that time. Or, if it was, it was alike in that they'd both been moved by fear and fidelity, not malice—although Evan really had wanted to hurt Severus. It had been the only way it had occurred to him, in that moment, to scream out the strength of feelings he hadn't understood.

Severus had just wanted Evan _back._

Still, having given that promise, he found himself struggling uneasily with a nagging voice, somewhere in the back of his mind, that said he owed Evan the opportunity to present him, in turn, with at least the illusion of a near-death experience. After all, it had only been the _suggestion_ of an avada kedavra, not the death spell itself, and the green lightning spell was in no wise the panicking, unmoored thing he'd first plucked out from his outrage and humiliation to hurl at Lockhart. That, or to give him some other free shot of some sort. A voice that…

That sounded a bit like Lily at her most annoying and least sensible, he'd have had to say in order to be both scrupulous with himself and fair to her. But a voice like that, telling him that to let Evan hit him back in some way would be the 'honorable' and 'sporting' thing to do.

He rather wanted to find that voice and hold its mouth underwater until it promised to stop wielding words at him that didn't bloody mean anything, and certainly nothing that he agreed with in context and that didn't make him gag. That was a shabby trick for one's own mind to pull on one. He was quite indignant about it. It wasn't even sensible at all, really. Eye-for-an-eye would not have served justice in the least.

Evan had been quite clear that he wanted restorative and not retributive justice. He had asked for what he wanted, gotten it, and given every indication (really every indication) that his generous and gentle heart was satisfied and considered the matter closed.

Severus couldn't consider the matter closed, even after he'd told himself at least three times that it ought to be up to Evan to decide. He simply couldn't, because for a painter, Ev was bloody fantastic at squeezing his eyes shut and jamming his fingers in his ears.

It probably came of growing up in a beautiful, sprawling manor with no one to talk to but your nanny, some goats, the roses, and empty seats full of the shadows of parents who didn't even have enough sense of love or duty to stand by a child who was everything they could have asked for, and certainly not enough of a trial as to make them go periodically mad and dive into the cups and

O2-three-four-five hold CO2-four-five-six

and

O2-three-four-five hold CO2-four-five-six.

Whatever the reason, Severus couldn't believe it was as over as Evan wanted it to be.

All the observations of his childhood, however, told him that punishing himself was likely to lead to that vicious spiral of guilt-shame-resentment-explosion with which he was intimately familiar, which he did not wish to revisit from the inside. He therefore felt he ought to dissuade—or at least distract—himself from _pointless_ remorse and consider, more usefully, the problem of reparation.

Even if Evan did seem to consider that reparations had been made, even if Severus could understand his position. Severus had performed an action that unsettled Evan unpleasantly: had done that to him. Then he'd performed one that unsettled Ev in all the ways he liked best: had _given_ that to him.

It hadn't been solely about pleasing Evan to make him feel better after an unhappy experience, but rather reaffirming his relationships both with Severus and with feelings that weren't placid comfort. Once reassured that he hadn't been changed into someone who feared either of those things, Ev was happy enough to be going on with, in his own opinion.

This was only to be expected. Evan thought in the short-term and on the small-scale where he himself was concerned: Severus would have done the same. Seeing one's own greater picture was a rare talent. Difficult to be otherwise, really, considering how close one was to it.

Seeing the greater picture of an intimate friend was also difficult, but at least one wasn't quite at the heart of the storm. One was at least at enough of a remove to be able to walk around, if not to see from afar.

Severus wasn't nearly distant enough that he had the foggiest idea what to do, or even to be certain that distance was, really, what was needed. But he did think that crucial one-step-away had given him the perspective Evan was shutting his eyes to: that Ev was afraid, now, of a thing he hadn't realized before that he feared, and that it was Severus who'd made him know it.

Although he wouldn't have admitted it, it rather baffled Severus—no. It utterly flummoxed Severus to suddenly learn that Evan was afraid of being dead. He couldn't wrap his mind around it at all. He could understand fearing the moment of passage, in times like these when he _knew_ some of what people were doing to each other, and suspected he only knew the least of it.

And he could understand when Muggles feared unpleasant or difficult reincarnation, or hell. Although the latter made less sense to him the more that was learned about neurology and the more that was discredited about soul weight studies. Muggles didn't have dementors and couldn't see ghosts: their every scrap of credible evidence led in the direction of pure cessation with the death of the brain; they had nothing but (admittedly powerful) folklore and tradition to suggest they would end in anything but nothingness.

There was no suffering in nothingness, so what was there to fear? One wouldn't be aware of being forgotten, or ill-spoken or having one's wishes overturned, or the world marching on regardless in other ways, or of anything. Nothing that could be feared would be experienced. Not even peace would be experienced, never mind fear or suffering.

Severus didn't assume that human life did end in nothingness. He'd conversed often with ghosts, had his homework marked by one and spent his childhood under the eyes of portraits. The accounts of dementors he'd read included sources he considered credible. Had grown up on his mother's stories of them, and found their existence no harder to credit than the existence of functional airplanes, space travel, open-heart surgery, and hoovers.

He was equally familiar with the theory behind the function and makeup each of these five things. Which was to say: somewhat but in no great detail. He felt he had a reasonable idea of how to keep from making a dead fool of himself in regards to each of them should he ever need to, and had personally encountered none of them outside of pictures, moving or otherwise. He had, at least, spoken to people who _had_ personally encountered both hoovers and dementors, and he felt he could tell the difference between a DADA lesson that was kept terse due to an instructor's ignorance as opposed to the same instructor's shellshock and recurring waking nightmares.

He thought a life might well dissipate into nothing, if no portraits were painted and one didn't decide to become a ghost. It was only his opinion: he didn't delude himself that he knew or _could_ know—although the fact that ghosts insisted they'd had an opportunity to _make_ a decision was interesting. Even, perhaps, persuasive.

Muggles didn't have even those indicators that anything of humanity existed beyond and outside the human brain. Still, they feared.

Wizards, as far as Severus could make out, believed in a soul that was, in some respects at least, bipartite. Or, say rather, a soul that could without trauma be separated into two parts in death. Described in the Greek tradition, one's psyche would depart unless it chose to remain as a ghost, but one's thymos, one's vital, energetic personality, would be bound to any portraits that were made: portraits were no mere eidolons, not listless lingering shades but true continuations of the dead person's mind and self, if not their essence and soul.

Whatever that really meant. Severus had difficulty with the idea that a mind and soul might not be entirely synonymous, far more than he did with the idea that a soul might be wiped clean of the conscious memories of a past life, perhaps leaving deeper resonances of a former self's experience that could not be, exactly, remembered, but which still shaped one's instincts and the drifts and eddies of one's feelings. He had, after all, created magic that could do that very thing, in small.

Evan liked to describe things more as the Egyptians did, but Egyptian soul-words were written to account for the solid, three-dimensional posthumous entities that might interact with the living world, like shabti and some forms of the bau. Not for two-dimensional portraits or intangible ghosts that only talked and did not, for example, bring ill-luck or plague.

Severus would have told Evan his terminology was confused, except that Evan was using words that had become the jargon of his profession. However far they'd deviated from their original meaning, it was not Severus's profession. He had to grit his teeth and tolerate it.

Whatever words he used, though, Evan, or so Severus had always understood, put his _faith_ in portraits. Severus might think they were at best a cruel prank magic was playing on wizards and at worst a gilded eternal prison at the mercy of the whims and politics of the living, but to Evan they were safety and the home of his—their—future.

The prospect of waking up in his portraits too soon should have shaken Ev, yes. It should have made him angry that Severus would have threatened him—although it certainly hadn't been meant as a threat—with cutting him out of the world before he'd done everything he wanted to. Before allowing him to finish a portrait they could live in together, or even a complete portrait of Severus's own.

And Severus did, honestly, understand his feelings on this issue. Nevertheless, the idea of eternity, especially in a world against whose inevitably recycling horrors he, as a painted shade, would be powerless to pit himself, was so ghastly that he simply could not bring himself to agree.

In either case, the prospect of death shouldn't have made Evan fear for his life in the way a _muggle_ would have. It shouldn't have made him fear being _extinguished._

Evan might consider that he'd received the justice he wanted and the incident was over, but Severus knew they had aftermath to address together. His idiotic side, which he liked to think of as his Prince side so he felt less hysterically compelled to slice it out of himself with a cheese-grater, wanted to turn to Evan and tackle the issue head-on, but that was his idiotic side. Since Evan was satisfied, making his own feelings Evan's problem would be a mewlingly unfair shoving away of duty, as well as counterproductive.

His Slytherin side was still thoroughly at a loss. Fortunately, that was his patient self, and could wait until he had a chance to talk to Narcissa, or perhaps one of the older witches and wizards he'd recently come to suspect probably wouldn't kick at his fingers for fun if they found him clinging to a cliffside.

He was also thoroughly at a loss about how to even _think_ about coaxing any information at all out of vampires, much less information they were so unlikely to want to give him as what he needed for his research.

Here at least, however, he was on firmer ground. Nobody _ever_ wanted to talk to him. People from whom he needed something not wanting to talk to him was the ground state of his existence. Of course, usually people wished that he'd go away, not to kill and eat him, but they did say variety was the spice of life.

He instantly regretted allowing that phrase to come to mind in the context of vampires.

Although it wasn't by any means his biggest problem, Severus did consider that being the sort of person whose brain often made him want to hit himself even when others weren't already clamouring to do it for him was one of his more recurring ones. That, however, was his own personal humiliation.

A similarly recurring and problematical embarrassment which he considered to be an unavoidable consequence of attending Britain's foremost magical public school (and, really, one had to expect some drawbacks to such a staggering advantage) was that he did rather tend to think along House lines—and not merely in the matter of House warfare. Everyone he knew did, so this one, he considered, was not his own fault.

It wasn't even that one thought along one's _own_ House lines. The embarrassment had nothing to do with being too much of a this or not enough of a that for any given person, including himself (that was a separate embarrassment).

No, the problem with Hogwarts graduates, in Severus's opinion, wasn't that the simplest and stupidest of them blunderbussed ahead doing things in the style of their own House. The simplest and stupidest of any sentient species _always_ blundered along unquestioningly doing things as their own culture had trained them to. That wasn't unusually problematic.

What was, however, was that when even the most _intelligent and facile_ of Hogwarts graduates faced a problem, they would begin to speak in terms of, "How would a Ravenclaw look at this?" Or, "That might be a bit of a Gryffindor way to go about it," or "Doesn't that seem a bit, well, _Slytherin_ to you," or "Oh, really, now, let's not be complete Hufflepuffs about this."

It wasn't exclusively a Hogwarts problem, of course.

Mingyue's grandmother talked about everything in terms of yin and yang, even when she didn't use those exact words, half the time. When she talked about people, she didn't describe their intelligence, trustworthiness, or creativity first, second, or third: she emphasized how well she knew them, and how connected they were to her family and her friends.

Severus's father's friends judged other men, on the most overt level, according to a metric of what they liked to drink (which could make up for the wrong sort of job) and how long and how loudly they could talk about the footie (and how hot they got over what teams, of course) and what they thought about Jim Callagan. Or, apparently, now, Margaret Thatcher.

—Who Severus was rather gleefully looking forward to pretending to support on the grounds that she'd been a chemist now that he and Da were talking again.

Because he was absolutely going to do that. Despite his strong opinion, as a research worker who was about to go into teaching, that privatization combined with tax cuts was an invitation to pitchforks and, further, that Samuel Smiles and his self-satisfied Self-Help should have been left to survive penniless in Whitechapel for six months and then cuffed and hung upside down (by his own bootlaces, of course, the better to pull himself up with using only his teeth) until the weight of gravity disarranging his circulation forced a little extra oxygen into his brain. Thrift and industry were indeed the best of weapons against personal poverty when there was work to be _had_ and nothing was stealing or seducing all one's income away. This was, to put it delicately, not the case everywhere at all times.

Severus was keenly curious to find out whether, once he had devil's advocated Da into shouting this opinion at him with enough fervor to convince even himself, the clawed and lingering ghosts of the alehouse might come to have a bit less power. He didn't rely on things turning out that way; his parents' house seemed to have more or less settled itself, and it wasn't entirely his business any more, in any case. But it seemed a worthy experiment, and far more likely to do some slight good than much harm.

This line of thought, he considered ruefully, might well fall into the category of 'blunderbussing ahead doing things in the style of one's own House.' But Slytherin, more than other Houses, acknowledged not only that its members were individuals but that their individuality should be honored by themselves and taken note of by others. Subtlety was a tool with which Severus had never felt quite at home. You needed, he felt, to grow up with soft words in your ears to be able to understand them, let alone wield them.

Then again, maybe it was his defaulting to words like 'wield' to begin with, instead of ones like, perhaps, 'wash,' that was his barrier. That was what confused Madam Chang about him: Míngyuè had convinced her that Slytherins should be thought of in yin terms even when they were men, and when he spoke at soft volumes and was what she called an herbalist, she thought the matter was entirely settled. Evan's third-year obsession with the classic—or, rather, modern—dualistic diagram had taught Severus that there was always a seed in everything of its opposite, but he felt lonely about remembering this.

Not quite so lonely, perhaps, as he'd felt when 'the lads' at home were making it clear about what made a good bloke as opposed to a queer 'un, but it was all the same really. Living outside your local box was dangerous. Being the sort of person who knew the 'box' was really a 'turtle' and the turtle was in fact a Roman shield formation and _that's why venturing outside it was dangerous_ , if potentially rewarding, was dangerous.

But at home, you belonged or you didn't. Sometimes in turns, or, perhaps, at once; there was that strange state of 'he may be a psychotic and questionable insert-adjective-here we'll beat at the drop of a hat but he's OUR insert-adjective-here so don't you dare look at him crosswise' that made up Severus's life no matter where he lived.

Which, he gathered from Regulus, was quite like being the younger sibling of a brother who was congenitally incapable of not bullying anyone he didn't worship. This was quite cheering: it was nice to think one had a tribe, however scattered and cowed and burning with passive-aggressive resentment and most likely incapable of pulling together on absolutely anything.

At Hogwarts, on the other hand, the box was not a single entity. It had four walls, but they were, collectively, just as looming and inescapable. Even Severus, who had spent the two summers between the opening of the Nelson public library and his first summer job gorging himself on every thought he could get his hands on that the Hogwarts library had never heard of, still incessantly caught himself thinking, "Stop being such a manebrain," or, "what is his priority of loyalty," or "what's her obsession?"

He reminded himself, whenever he could, to try and identify the philosophy that whoever he was dealing with might have most identified with if wizards under seventy or so knew what philosophy was. To remember his classical strategists, and apply their methods.

But he had been raised and taught by those who had raised and taught him, had grown up among the harridans and ogres and slyboots he'd grown up with, and not any others. He knew how to read between the lines of the Prophet better than other newspapers, and no matter how hard he racked his brains, he could think of no way to punish without exposing himself to a fight than to exclude the object of his displeasure from something they wanted access to.

Which was not a tactic he generally had available. That very gentle, kind, miraculously inoffensive face of Evan's that said _Oh, don't worry, I know you didn't mean it quite the way it sounded, I don't mind at all if you'd like to try again_ was also not something he was able to use to good effect. It simply did not work on his face. The one time he'd tried it where he thought it would be safe, _Reggie_ had kicked him. If it hadn't been a very serious kick, it had been a quite serious stomping-off-in-a-sulk afterwards.

However, not being Slughorn didn't make him less a Slytherin. Somewhat to his chagrin, it didn't even make him less one of Slughorn's Slytherins, because it seemed that when he couldn't do a thing properly his only answer was to find someone else to do it.

He had decided to blame Slughorn for this, because the alternative was blaming Evan and Narcissa. If he blamed Evan and Narcissa, he would be blaming it not on learned tactics but on exposure to the inbred laziness of his rich friends who could buy labor. And that would be insupportable, and then he'd have to go find the cheese-grater. Wizards didn't even _have_ cheese-graters.

In either case, over the past week and a half, while Evan had painted and chatted and chattered and maneuvered and maneuvered and painted and eaten enough pastries and stuffed peppers to seriously annoy Severus for reasons he hadn't quite managed to put his finger on yet (he _liked_ watching Evan enjoy food; there was nothing to be annoyed about), Severus had gotten absolutely nowhere.

Well.

He'd put together the bones of a curriculum that he was quite proud of and wasn't going to get to implement, since he was only going to be helping Slughorn. Although he might be able to wiggle a few things in, here and there. Might well, if Slughorn decided that it would be safe for him to unload any real responsibility onto Severus, as opposed to just tedium, and float off like a plum-colored velvet balloon to more parties than he could normally have done.

And Severus had gathered a few thoughts on the subject of keeping order in a classroom full of children who were guaranteed to challenge his authority, and more than a few on the subject of looking after a common room full of feral alley cats who each thought himself king and had the parental and financial backing to prove it, at least to his own satisfaction, while that common room was under siege and on fire.

And he had, on the basis of quite genuinely wanting to page through every used bookstore in the country with tomes he could read or put to translation spell until his fingers bled, acquired probably-flawed blueprints (or, more properly, vellum-etchings) of the castle for which he needed blueprints.

And he'd even found what he needed for his little personal quest. His excuse for this search had been, in his own opinion, less convincing than 'why are you looking at me like that, I like books, I like maps, I like history, would you like written testimonials from everyone I've ever bored,' but Karkaroff had questioned it considerably less.

Karkaroff was something of a mystery to Severus, and Evan's only explanation for his weird behavior was neither plausible nor even sane. Which wasn't a denunciation: Evan's existence was a deeply reassuring proof positive for Severus that sanity was highly overrated. That this overrating was done by the vast majority was irrelevant; he had overwhelming evidence that an entire community which was satisfied on the subject of what and who was sane and sensible could be, to a man, miserable, unfruitful, and self-destructive.

Severus was, just, prepared to believe it possible that someone might enjoy his company more than Evan's. Evan did, which made it impossible to call the thing impossible. Even Reggie, who was less unique, had never displayed any particular interest in spending much time alone with Ev. Dumbledore, of whom so many thought so highly, had the extremely poor taste to apparently not even like _looking_ at Evan.

Severus had noticed this during his NEWT years. He'd found it, confusingly, both intensely satisfying and remarkably offensive. It shouldn't have mattered to him at all, since it didn't seem to put Evan at more of a disadvantage than any other Slytherin, but it itched, somehow.

While Severus _was_ prepared to believe that Karkaroff might be among the handful of deeply socially maladjusted people who liked him better than the only deeply good person with both intelligence and any strength that was real strength currently living and quite possibly the only one the planet had ever produced, Ev's explanation for Karkaroff's alternately twitchy and overly eager set of microbehaviors was still extraordinarily silly. Since it was the only explanation Severus had been offered, Karkaroff remained something of a mystery.

However mysterious his motives, though, Karkaroff's _preferences_ were clear enough that it hadn't really surprised Severus that his thoroughly lame excuse had worked. 'I'm just looking for artistic craftswizards that we might perhaps find for Rosier to talk to if he runs out of clients before I run out of professors and brewers to talk to so that he won't go wandering around the city by himself, oh, I do beg your pardon, I didn't at all mean to imply that you as his assigned guide would be so unprofessional as to leave him to get lost unguarded,' should not have worked.

Well. It shouldn't have worked so well as to pass unexamined. But Karkaroff was an emotional man. Severus had, depressingly, proved justified in his cynical decision not to bother thinking of a backup explanation.

He was pleased with his plan. Very pleased. It remained to be seen whether he would regret it, but in this case he thought his anxiety on the subject was largely instinctive. Evan would be pleased, too, he was almost sure.

Almost. Enough to follow through with it. Probably. At least enough to collect a vial of blood while Ev was sleeping, and hide it in with all his other vials of protected amber glass.

In any case, it wasn't correct to say that he'd gleaned nothing from Bulgaria thus far.

On the subject of how to politely ask a vampire to contribute to his research without getting his throat ripped out, however, he really had got nowhere.

And then he opened the window to the owl that wasn't from home.

 _Nephew, or so I will call you, as you are not quite so much younger than I as to persuade me that strict truth is more important than brevity,_ wrote the madwoman with the bluebird hat.

Severus had stared at it, feeling his eyes go different sizes, for what had felt like half an hour and must have been a good three minutes of real time before Evan had noticed the waves of sheer disbelief rolling off him and asked what he was reading.

"Mrs. Longbottom does not wish to be reminded that she can be addressed by any familial title including the word 'great,'" he replied, rather dry. "It's so important to her that she must open her first written communication with someone who might do so with the dictate that he is not to think of it."

Evan came over, looked, grinned his little crinkly-eyed mouth-tugged-down smile that was Society's version of snickering, and noted, "I thought when we met her that her hat was too twee for her."

"Decidedly," agreed Severus, and kept reading while Evan insinuated his way in between Severus's back and the sofa.

"Well, go on," Ev prodded him comfortably. Which was to say that Evan poked him repeatedly in the ribs with a knee. It was quite uncomfortable, and thoroughly intrusive, and Severus was profoundly glad and grateful that Evan was not thinking even once, let alone twice, before annoying him like that. He did not let those feelings stop him from swatting Ev's leg back in mild irritation, because the whole point was not to allow them, as a them, to become distorted.

"Nephew, excessively detailed and defensive definition of her use of the term et cetera," Severus reread obediently. Evan snickered into his hair, and he leaned into the much more pleasantly yielding backrest than the still-alien fabric of the lodge's sofa. The sofa never wrapped its arms around him, and if it had, he would have blasted it into smithereens and jumped out the window.

"She _isn't_ older enough really," Evan pointed out, being fair.

"And I don't especially object to omitting a syllable," Severus allowed. "Omitting a word or syllable whose presence in the sentence can be assumed is done all the time. Taking three lines on the page to insist she's not old enough to be a great-aunt and then claiming she's acting in the interests of brevity is ludicrous."

"Does she go on being ludicrous?"

Or, at least, Severus thought that was what Evan had asked. The words were rather squashed into the hollow under his ear, such that he felt more than heard them. It was probably a safe assumption.

"Nephew, et cetera, my sister has been dropping hints the size of the Giant Squid that I am, unlike her, magically unconstrained from contacting you and she'd rather like me to."

"No, what did she really say?" Evan protested, his lips long in a grin against Severus's neck.

"'It having been the case,'" Severus droned, pitching his voice high in a pinched enough Yorkshire accent to make Evan regret asking that translation be dispensed with, "'that, following our chance encounter with you and your companion Master Rosier at the convention in Dartmoor, my good sister Julilla has several times remarked upon the mischance of—'"

"All right, all right!" Ev laughed, arms tightening around him in surrender.

Severus rearranged his shoulders in satisfaction and leaned back more. Semi-gracious in victory, he resumed his own voice. "The upshot being that Mrs. Prince is anxious about my well-being, having been reminded of its existence. She doesn't, it seems, think she's barred from owling _you,_ per se, but has suggested that if I were to paint 'Severus's dustbin' on some new box, some more direct communication could be arranged. Or, at least, more direct contact. She was never able to write to Mam, as far as I'm aware, just to give us things. I suppose some tacit code might be put in place, but unless the possibility of real communication formerly existed and was not exploited, one imagines that misunderstandings might occur."

"Probably not if she just wants to send you biscuits," Evan pointed out, still smiling.

"Assuming that is all she wants," Severus countered, cynical. "Have you had any word from Linkin on the subject of how she is, in fact, magically or legally constrained?"

Evan shook his head, glumly saying, "Protego, protego, protego."

Severus tried not to internally translate that into _roadblock, roadblock, roadblock,_ but he couldn't help it. Evan almost certainly didn't care, but it was a bad habit. "Too soon to ask, or is that odd?"

Evan unwrapped an arm to waggle a hand in the air. "Not necessarily too soon, but not odd. The argument is still about whether or not the solicitor's allowed to let your grandfather know someone's prying. I'm trying to work out whether we'd have a better or worse chance in the end if you made inquiries in your own name."

Severus nodded silently. He had worlds more right to know about how thoroughly he was barred from the House of his blood than Evan did, by almost anyone's definition, and about his grandparents' marital contract. Evan, however, had a far better inborn set of tools for prying any wizarding question open, and no black marks against his name.

"What will you tell her?" Evan asked.

Severus blinked. "…Do I have to tell her something?" he asked warily, twisting around until he could see something solid, familiar, mostly-comprehensible, and soothing.

Deep-water eyes crinkled, and Ev rubbed their temples together. "Sorry, Spike," he confirmed unapologetically, and cast his gaze up to the ceiling in his tormenting-Severus-with-his-own-words face. "Hullo, Malfoy," he singsonged, "Rosier says civilized people write to each other, but I don't know why he thinks I ought to try it…"

" _So_ I don't know why," Severus corrected him grumpily.

"Impress your nice auntie," Evan tyrannized heartlessly, tucking a grin into Severus's shoulder.

"She's not nice at all."

"Good, you'll get along famously."

" _You're_ not nice at all," Severus lied, more grouchily still.

Far too cheerfully, Evan hissed between his teeth. Severus sighed, slumped pitiably, was not taken pity upon. Because he _had_ lied, and Evan was not only quite nice but also no fool.

Rather, he was a ruthless ginger carrot-wielder, who thought he could get Severus to do anything with the reminder that no one else's hand would have been permitted anywhere near his shirt buttons without being subjected to instant gangrene. Palm hot on Severus's vest, thumb moving comfortingly between the bones under his throat, Evan kindly ordered him, "Throw your grandmother a bone, Naj."

Sighing more and slumping more, Severus complained, "I don't know what that _means._ "

"She's reaching out to you," Ev explained instead of scoffing or getting impatient, because he was an appropriately halo-haired space alien and not your garden-variety-horrible homo sapiens. "It might be real or she might be playing a game, but either way, your best option is to along with it and give her a bit of what she wants. You don't have to fall on her neck blubbing; she won't even think you might. Honestly, Spike, even if she _hadn't_ met you now, anybody in your position would be on guard, I'd think. She'd be stupid to expect anything else."

And of course, because Severus was a Hogwarts alumnus, he instantly felt a Comment About Hufflepuffs bubbling against his lips. It wasn't in the least because he in fact thought Hufflepuffs were, as a group, stupid or in any sense worthless. The world ran on Hufflepuffs, and 'someone has to do it and I can' was the sort of thinking he in fact respected above all others.

It wasn't even, he thought but was less sure, because he was especially prone to Making Comments. He thought that he was, in fact, not: his were just noticed more than those of others, either because of confirmation bias or because his choice of moments was less judicious or his word selections more idiosyncratic than those of his yearmates, who would almost all have thought a Flying Circus was one done on brooms.

Not even because he was, especially, a Slytherin. It was just, he was almost sure, because he'd gone to Hogwarts and hadn't been a Hufflepuff.

Oh, he would have been tempted to make comments about Gryffindor out of personal experience with its ignoble hypocrisies and corrupting self-delusions, there was no question about that. But most non-Gryffindors, even in a complete absence of personal animus, made mild jokes with tolerant eye-rolling about posers and fools rushing in where angels feared to tread and space aliens wouldn't see any good reason to. Non-Ravenclaws shrugged their shoulders about eccentricities and bluestockings and dull obsessives who couldn't tell when others weren't interested in their jobs or their little hobbies but clever, of course, couldn't do such-and-such without them, all in the same dismissive tone.

Severus doubted that anything anyone had ever said about Slytherin hadn't been sneered in his face already. It was, surely, impossible that he hadn't already heard it all. He didn't have to guess at the mild version when he'd been repeatedly slapped with the foetid, rotting meat of it. Surely.

And even he, who had been for interminable years the picture in the dictionary under House Prejudice, who quite respected the culture of Hufflepuff as he understood it. Even he, who had found Sprout's no-nonsense, down-to-earth briskness unendingly reassuring (if rather heavily peppered with 'chaps' and 'blokes' and exhausting heartiness) and had reason to be grateful to her.

He, who was staring into the grey stones of the lion's gullet again. Who this time would be _responsible._ As he never had before, even in the small way of a prefect. Who would be given the tools of power, but no allies at his shoulder or lurking in his shadows. Who would have a position ambiguous both in its newness and his probationary ability to be thoroughly overruled by all the authority figures the students were more accustomed to and had not heard so roundly abused.

"It's not so frustrating as all that really," Evan said comfortingly, rubbing him with broader strokes. For a moment that was as startling, thrilling, and terrifying as it was profoundly unsurprising, Severus was convinced that Ev had read his mind through the side of his skull, without even eye contact. Then Ev went on, "Just tell her you're well, give her a couple of picturesque details that'll let her make a nice picture in her head of Spike-vacationing-abroad. If you want to let her think she can earn your favor, give her something she can do for you."

So he'd purely been reading Severus's body, and not his mind at all. This wasn't merely reasonable: it swamped Severus with something at once like wonderment and being just slightly bruised all over, but not in a way that hurt. It made him want to turn completely around and get under Evan's shirt with him, so that they were both wearing it, held closely together by it, their heartbeats muddled.

That, however, would have made no sense in the context of the conversation. There was a piece of him, tucked away at the back of his mind, that thought he would have done it anyway if they'd been home. They weren't.

(They never would be again.)

"What could she possibly do for me?" Severus scoffed. If she was telling the truth she was helpless, and if she was lying she was false, awful, and trying to trap him into god-knew-what. In which case Severus didn't want anything from her anyway.

Would not want anything substantive even as a means to the end of making her reveal herself. Not even if it would be useful in its own right, not even though every rational view of the question would mean he would owe her no gratitude or debt at all.

(And he was supposed to go back among the cold stones and let the drakelets look up to him. In how many ways could one be an imposter at once?)

"What could _anyone_ do for you?" Evan asked in his just-being-sensible problems-what-are-problems voice.

Severus turned again to look at him. First dubiously and then just a touch speculatively. Evan wasn't looking unusual or augmented in any way—the sun hadn't sparked off halos or rose-tone rainbows in his hair or any such nonsense.

There was, however, still a fading crease high on his cheek from the pillow, and his smile had crinkled his eyes in a way that made Severus imagine him with uncrumpled-parchment skin and white hair. He'd be heavier by far by then, almost certainly; he had the sort of broad bones and easy, healthy bodily strength that always did thicken and settle with age, even when an athletic man tried to keep in shape.

Severus was expecting attacks of vanity on that front, but considering that he himself was already constantly skirting the line between spare and gaunt, he thought it would probably be just as well if at least one of their skeletons had some padding—although a clinging cauldron would be unsettlingly and unpleasantly familiar and it was also just as well that Ev had put Severus in control of their meals.

He planned to preserve the red-gold, though, to the extent that it was within the power of potions. Ginger hair wasn't as unusual in the wizarding world as the muggle, but it did still stand out, and each family's shades tended to be particular, or at least to fall within a certain spectrum. Evan didn't make enemies such that unique hair was a vulnerability for him, and the shade of it was not only visually appealing but, after years of unshaken trust, an instant _Evan_ to Severus: an instant pleasure and tranquility even when it was just an unexpected glimpse of a satsuma in someone's fruit bowl, off in his periphery.

He was loathe to give that up at the mere suggestion of nature. Let time slowly blur their skin and play little games with their metabolisms, if they were so lucky; the pace of that seemed to be so slow that there would never be a time that they would look at each other in surprise, never think _you look different._ Rather, the younger-them in pictures would be the ones whose appearances were jarring, who didn't seem quite who they'd each chosen every day since.

Time would do what it would. Severus would keep them as healthy as he could. And though he was no artist himself and had no blood-House of his own and no coat of arms to bring or to give, he could, he thought, protect the colors of their selves for each other.

"Oh, well, yes," Evan said as if Severus had told him something he could agree with, his amused eyes softening and warming as his arms came up Severus's back, hands turning tender. "I could do that."

More often than not, Severus cared more about making Evan feel what he wanted to than about anything else. That was why Ev, who had had the opportunity to try probably everything under the Hogwarts sky before bewilderingly turning his face to Severus for more than moments at a time, didn't get bored with him, he supposed. He himself, when he was being selfish in the way that wasn't all about Evan, was extremely dull. All he ever wanted, when he let himself need, was Evan's eyes and his weight, his mouth and his skin and the clutch of his hands, the pulse of him so deep Severus could carry it away with him, a nest of hands or broader, steady, heartbeat-housing flesh to sheathe his face.

Usually Evan wanted to see him and kiss him at these times, too. Sometimes, though. Sometimes.

Sometimes Evan thought Severus needed that weight to be at his back. To give himself over completely to trust.

Here, away from everything, staring down the maw of the castle like a rabbit in headlights, with monsters stalking the future and no home to go home to.

Severus shattered.

Heavy, yielding, and impenetrable, his skin and his shield and his blood kissed away the salt. Too quietly in his ear, surely, for any listening spells to catch, the embers of the hearth crackled, "Got you, Spike."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Snippets** :  
>  _On the matter of Severus's calling Evan 'the only deeply good' etc:_
> 
>  **Beta** : Bite your tongue, you sorry excuse-for-a-cobra, what about Lily and your Mam, then?
> 
>  **Author** : He loves them both fiercely and judges them very harshly on some measures. Evan has not fundamentally disappointed him to the point that Ev's pedestal has been removed. This is why Evan is a space alien and not a human: to be human is to be weak and flawed. Our Mr. Prince won't ever abandon you just because you've fallen short of his standards (you have to be a real and unmanageable threat), but his standards for 'good' and 'strong' are both specific and unfairly high.
> 
>  **Beta** : Huh. That actually doesn't clock with my impression of what I've seen of how he views Evan thus far. He seems far too aware of Evan's failings to have him up on a pedestal. Loves him, certainly, but that kind of hero-worship (both the kind described in the text and in your note) doesn't seem to fit, to me. I wonder why my impression is so different?
> 
>  **Author** : I think it must be a difference in the how we're thinking of 'failings.' He doesn't think Evan is perfect, but Evan's imperfections, to him, are either minor annoyances that he'd call kinda cute if he weren't Severus or are things that are primarily harmful to Evan. Evan's devotion to hedonism and laziness do sort of offend him philosophically, except that he thinks that Evan is so potentially dangerous that such devotions are laudable coping mechanisms and distractions to be encouraged. To him, Evan could be the embodiment of 'an it harm none, do as ye will.' Severus and Lily and his mother, on the other hand, could all be good representatives for "If I've decided it's what I ought to do, I have also decided to harden my heart against the damage it causes." He can't be otherwise, which is part of why he joins everyone in having a big problem with Severus Snape: he's _been_ the 'acceptable collateral damage,' and he doesn't think it's ok.


	24. Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dark wizard takes a beautiful young witch on a stroll through an enchanted forest in a country whose language she does not speak, casts a secret spell on her, and drags her against her will into a seedy-looking establishment.
> 
> Narcissa isn't phased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** for SLYTHERIN! And blood. See summary. 
> 
> **Notes** : I was going to have a win-a-question contest about spotting the spell... but then my brilliant beta never managed it, so I had to make it more obvious. Also, heading into holiday madness. Tell you what, first three correct answers get to ask Albus, Gellert, or Tom one question. Not 'each,' please, work is about to get seriously mental...
> 
> Also—this may be a mistake, but I've somewhat dubiously acquired a twitter account. I don't currently mean to use it much, but it might be useful if people would like me to announce updates there, or ask questions without putting spoilers in the comments or something, idk. The handle is @exsequeverus. Needless to say, we are not at home to malice, flaming troll-dolls, pedantry for the sake of one-upmanship (as opposed to for the joy of pedantry), or similar nonsense, but good-faith communications are welcomed!

“But it was so _clever_ of you to ask your aunt for the invitation, darling!” Narcissa praised warmly as Severus meandered her down some really very charming foresty paths.

“Oh, well, obviously it was Evan’s idea,” Severus demurred like the goose he was.

She patted his arm and was kind enough not to agree with him about the ‘obviously.’ “No, darling, I meant it was clever of you to really-truly go through with it, graciously. Or, at least, without kicking up an enormous stink so that you only immortally offended the poor vampires the first time.”

“That was not my fault,” Severus declared indignantly.

She patted him again. “Of course not, darling.”

“It _wasn’t!”_ he protested. “It’s not as if I put on a black cloak with a red lining and slicked my hair back. I can’t help being pale!”

“Now, that’s not true, Severus,” she had to point out. “You used to go quite a reasonable color by the time school got out when we made you study outdoors enough.”

“I’ve been _working_ all summer _,_ ” he pointed out grumpily. “In a lab. Indoors. Under a roof. A skylight charm isn’t actual sunlight, you know, even when it’s spelled to induce cholcaliferol synthesis.”

“English, darling.”

He eyed her warily. “Sunlight makes your skin produce vitamin D?”

“I’m sure that was closer,” she encouraged.

“It’s good for your bones?”

She decided that this was probably the best she was going to get, or wanted to. Besides which, he ought to be dissuaded from an ecstatic swoon into swotty, starstruck details about what probably only really amounted to the joyous, life-growing side of the magic in the sun that everyone had known about since they’d called it names like Lugh and Bel and Apollo. “That’s nice, Severus. So I suppose making sure a little boy plays outside is really quite important after all?”

“Yes, although sunburns ought not to be taken as a sign of ‘well done, keep it up,’” he noted, giving her a dubious side-eye.

“Well, I should think not,” she agreed. “ _Do_ they burn in the sun, by the way?”

“For pity’s sake, I didn’t ask,” he protested, passing her little test by looking appropriately indignant. “I had enough impertinent questions to ask them, I should think, even discounting the initial…”

“Fracas?” she suggested, dimpling one cheek at him. “Calamity?”

“Misunderstanding,” he corrected stiffly, raising his chin.

“Well, really, darling, I don’t know what you expected them to think,” she pointed out, not unsympathetically.

“I didn’t expect them to _notice!”_ he half-groaned. “Yes, all right, senses of smell heightened towards mammalian aromas I expected, but I didn’t expect them to have evolved to detect the smells of _foreign soil!”_

“Well, _I_ think it makes sense,” she said, practically. “It would be like perfume to them, wouldn’t it? Or, I suppose, more like oils in their bath, if they need to sleep on it. Especially if they’re mostly nocturnal and their vision is more about movement than color or shapes, as Professor Graves said. It would help them know each other.”

“It’s just in my shoes,” Severus said helplessly.

Narcissa looked at the trees around them, carefully keeping all traces of accusation out of her face.

_“Yes of course I launder my socks!!!”_

“Merlin’s oak, Severus,” she said mildly, “there’s no need to startle the grouse.”

He snarled, and bad-temperedly shot the illusion of a grey fox in the path of the fleeing birds, chasing them back to their nest, or at least the point in the undergrowth they’d shot out of. Narcissa was glad that neither she nor any of her ancestors had drunk dragon’s blood, or however it was that one really learned the green language. From the sound of it, the grouse were swearing at Severus something dreadful.

“They thought I’d dyed my hair and I was making fun of them,” he said sulkily. “I don’t dye my hair, Narcissa! If I were the sort of vain sod who took time out of my day to dye my hair, _it would not look like this!_ If their senses of smell are so bloody fantastic, why did they think I’d dyed my hair!?”

She thought about it, because he was in the sort of take-me-seriously-or-I-shall-scream mood that little girls who weren’t Bellatrix were trained to express in other ways by the time they got to Hogwarts.

Most little boys were, too, she thought, really, but Severus’s mother could be justifiably called wretched as an adjective as well as a pejorative. Whether or not she’d done her honest best with him, Narcissa had had to pick up a great deal of the woman’s slack far too late to do much good. She hadn’t minded _doing_ it—much—once they’d really got to know each other—but it really had been rather too late.

Of course, Severus might just have been the wizarding world’s most broadly applicable Object Lesson in all _manner_ of ways, but Narcissa didn’t think he’d mind overly if she used him to point out to Lucius that, with children, it was never too early. For anything of importance. Severus would complain and be sulky, of course, but she was sure that he would also agree, and, therefore, not _mind._ (Much.)

Presuming he survived what even he had readily admitted was a somewhat ill-advised determination to romp about with dark creatures in search of wisdom no one else was clever enough to particularly care about, let alone pay him for. In the end, the only thing she could think of was to ask, “Do you have walnuts in your soap?”

He blinked and shot her one of his squinty-eyed suspicious looks. “Why?”

“Walnut juice is a stain, isn’t it? People have known about it for ever so long,” she reminded him. “Even the oldest vampires might.”

His mouth quirked the suspicion away, and he sang—very quietly, as he nearly always did, as though if anyone who wasn’t his intended audience heard him he might find himself pelted with rotten fruit. Which ought to have been nonsense, but tragically wasn’t. His voice was a bit pinched and furry when he was almost as much speaking as singing, but it was lovely when he wasn’t so self-consciously afraid of being heard that he stuffed it all into the back of his head. He’d have had nothing to be ashamed of if he only stopped worrying about it.

What he sang, equally nonsensically, was, “The lady who dyes a chemical yellow or stains her grey hair puce—or pinches her figure—is splashed with great vigor with permanent wa-alnut juice…”

All she could think of was to weakly demand, “Puce?”

“I assume they were trying for a truer ginger and failed,” Severus explained gravely. At least, he was pretending to say it gravely; she could see straight through him, and despite strangling his own voice like a terrorized chipmunk he was in quite a good mood really. “It takes more work to color white hair than blond, you know, even an _ash_ -blond that looks white, like Lucius’s. It’s as if the hair says, ‘no, thank you, I am a _sage_ and an _elder_ now and I wish everyone to know it.’” He put on a sniffy face as he drawled, and made a dismissive little gesture.

It wasn’t one of his sweeping gestures; more fiddly, like a parody of a fussy old thing. She smiled; he and Evvie did so much hand-Ogham together, as if no one had eyes, that his thumb had automatically hit a few rune spots on his fingers, which were less stained than usual now he’d been away from his stillroom for a while. She might have amused herself with trying to spell out the word, but really it wasn’t right to encourage him, and a passing breeze coaxed her nose with something fresh and tantalizing.

“Did we just pass some sage?” she asked, feeling as if she might have missed an opportunity to pick something that smelled wonderful—far more wonderful than any boy’s clay-lined socks, at any rate, laundered or not.

“Russian sage, yes, I believe we did,” Severus agreed, looking pleased with her a bit out of proportion, in her opinion. “Although it’s a mint, really. Shall we go back for it?”

“Yes, let’s,” she agreed, and they turned. He paused to let her stoop for some acacia that she thought would stand out nicely against the silvery purple, and tolerantly wand-twisted some grass into a springy green basket for her. “You never said about the walnuts,” she reminded him.

“My day-soap is made with chestnuts,” he said in his scrupulous voice. “Not a staining agent. No walnuts.”

“Well, perhaps a nut is a nut to them.”

“I suppose,” he agreed, standing patiently while she considered a cluster of begonias and instantly forgot about them when the breeze teased her with a wisp of jasmine.

She beamed at him, even wider when she saw he’d added a handful of blue and white violets to the basket, and a whole, gloriously aromatic flowering elder twig. “You’re awfully accommodating today, darling.”

He shrugged, looking off into the woods with one of his almost-smiles. “It’s a nice day. Our ministry-appointed babysitter is confusing and I don't have to deal with him for the moment. Allow me my fun.”

“If I get a lovely bouquet for my breakfast table out of it, I shall be only too delighted to allow you anything you please, you hedgehog,” she laughed, and bent to pluck him a thistle that caught her eye.

He took it with a blink that looked almost uneasy, then smiled wryly, bowed over it, and dropped it into the basket.

“How is your ‘babysitter’ confusing?” she smiled, putting that blink aside in her mind to consider once she had anything to connect up with it.

“Oh, he and Evan can’t stand each other,” he explained, looking very confused indeed. “I keep expecting them to start barking and hissing at one another—and, Narcissa, _I can’t tell who’d do which!”_

She started laughing so hard at his poor befuddled hatchet face she had to sit down on a mossy log. He sulked, and whumphed down sulkily beside her to sulk more. “Never mind, darling,” she comforted him. “I’m sure Evvie has it well under control.”

“That’s it, though,” Severus looked up at her, troubled. “I’m not so sure he does. They don’t like him much here, Narcissa. He just… he doesn’t get on with people like he does at home, and the friendlier he is, the more their lips curl. I can’t understand it. Karkaroff says he haggles well, but he can’t seem to persuade anyone of anything. Everyone he paints at home raves about him—here, they talk about how sensitive Brits like me are so they wouldn’t want to say something bad, so how would it be if I just let them talk about the paintings, and _then_ they rave. Just about the paintings.”

“They don’t want to hurt your feelings?” Narcissa asked. “Are they afraid of you?”

“No,” Severus shook his head, adding a new layer of puzzled to his trouble. “They’re quite jovial, as a rule. They keep slapping me.”

Narcissa opened her mouth. Paused. Considered Severus (in the light of his being Severus). Shut her mouth. Raised her eyebrows on a long sigh, and asked, “Where do they keep slapping you?”

He waved a discomfited hand. “Oh, you know, on the back and the arm and so on. It’s rather unnerving, but I haven’t hexed anyone on reflex yet.” He pursed his lips in embarrassment, and admitted, “I almost did, once, but almost everyone in the room was over fifty and after they’d finished ducking and putting up shields and gave me my wand back they just said they understood and it was a pity someone my age was already like that and they hadn’t thought England was having much of a war lately. And then they tried to get me drunk.”

“ _Did_ they get you drunk?” she asked, fascinated.

“Oh, we all had a drink, I’m sure I couldn’t say who drank how much.” The sly, there-and gone sideways quirk of his mouth told her _not at all_. More somberly, he added, “They had quite a lot of stories. Things were very bad here, you know.”

“So in London Evvie’s more popular,” she brought him back on task practically, “and here you are. Well, that’s just as well, isn’t it? Stop looking at me as if I’ve turned gravity upside down and painted the sky polka-dotted pink and green, Severus, it isn’t _my_ fault that you’ve only ever spent any time in three places.”

“Four,” he corrected her, giving her one of his dubious and wary looks.

She waved her hand airily. “Summer at the Manor doesn’t count. That could count as either London or Hogsmeade. Hogwarts people approve of Gryffindors, these people approve of… well, something about you that Evvie doesn’t show them. It’s really quite simple, Severus. Tastes _differ,_ you ought to know that.”

He gave her the blank look that meant his ears understood every word she was saying but his brain was never going to make sense of them, ever.

She sighed. “Did you get what you needed from the vampires, at least?”

“Oh, well, more or less,” he said, looking a little disgruntled but mostly relieved to stop having to think about why anyone might not despise him. “Well. No. Not from _the vampires,_ ” he scrupled.

She smiled. “But?”

Embarrassed, he said, “But it turns out I have a cousin who I get on with? Well. I _say_ a cousin.”

“Like you have an auntie?” she teased.

He made a face halfway between scandal and revulsion, presumably due to thinking about how the phrase ‘Auntie Gussie’ would feel in his mouth, shuddered, and pursed his lips in marginally more serious contemplation. “A bit like that, only with a few more removes or seconds or what-nots.”

She poked him, mostly playfully. “ _Severus!”_

“I told you I ran into Alessia de Medici at the potions convention, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, a bit archly. “My aunt Callisto, however, did.”

He waved a _details, details_ hand he would never have allowed from her if she’d, to take an example purely at random, muddled up greater and lesser mugwort. “Evan suggested I mention the matter to Mrs. Longbottom, and I said why, and he said because ‘everyone knew’ the Prince line got started when Edward of Middleham’s great-grand-daughter—”

“When Melusine Plantagenet married Harry ‘Say-no-more’ Boleyn,” Narcissa nodded.

“Those are exactly the names he went out of his way to legally shed,” Severus noted mildly.

“Perfectly ridiculous,” Narcissa tossed her hair. “The Boleyns were a fine old family, and he could _hardly_ go about calling himself Tudor when he was being hidden _away_ from the muggle world, could he? Only a _man_ would have been surprised when everyone started calling him Seymour, under the circumstances.”

“Yes, well, _under the circumstances_ and considering no grandson of Henry VIII’s was likely to have taken kindly to being expected to take on his wife’s name, I suppose ‘Prince’ was the most reasonable compromise,” Severus said dryly. “If one doesn’t mind painting a bend sinister into the family arms both irrevocably and unignorably.”

“One ought to be who one is, oughtn’t one?”

“Easy for you to say,” he riposted, still quite dry. “In any case, Ev said ‘everyone knew’ they’d met at the Polyhistoria Conglia in Florence, and that the British Princes are only the main branch of the bloodline and probably only theoretically at this point and if you want to find an obscure connection a Black witch can’t find for you, you should ask a strega. So.” He shrugged.

“So you wrote Miss de Medici?”

“ _Maestra_ de Medici,” he corrected, with the sort of resentment that meant he didn’t resent that someone else had reached his goal before him, exactly, he just wanted to be where they were sooner than he thought he might get there. It was an easy thing to mistake, Narcissa was prepared to concede, if you didn’t know him. Or if you knew people who acknowledged competitors (as opposed to enemies) outside their own heads.

“All right, you wrote Maestra de Medici. And?”

Severus sighed. “And Princes are, historically, utter pigheaded morons who like to swan-dive into situations _far_ above their capacities in the name of Defeating The Darkness In The World.”

“…Oh, really?” she managed, fingers very coincidentally landing over her mouth.

Severus glared. “ _And who therefore_ occasionally end up with as much blood as a plantain, exercising their dramatic streaks by adopting names like,” he winced, “‘Sanguini.’ No, no, you needn’t try to stop laughing, explaining your death by hypoxia to Luke will surely finish him off, too, despite his grief, and then we can hand Draco off to someone who will raise him in a reasonable manner.”

“Oh, _Severus,_ ” Narcissa eventually managed, clinging to his arm with her hair falling out of its pins down their backs.[1]

“Don’t mind me,” he said dolefully. “I was born to populate a panto singlehandedly.”

“Oh, darling,” she giggled, patting his arm sympathetically.

“She’s related to him, too,” he said in an explaining tone of vicious satisfaction.

“Ah,” she tried to gather herself, “so _she’s_ the cousin you get on with.”

“…He didn’t try to eat me; I suppose that counts?”

“Oh, he didn’t?” she managed, stifling more giggles.

“Well,” he said fairly, “not very hard. I mean, it can’t have been very hard if quoting Americans was enough to make him recoil back going augh augh augh the light.”

“Americans?” she couldn’t help asking, despite being entirely certain that she didn’t want to. In a certain sort of mood, Severus could do that to a person.

He gave her one of his mad, glittery shark grins, and, half snarling, purred, “God! Though this life is but a wraith—although we know not what we use, although we grope with little faith—give me the heart to fight—and lose!”

She raised a well-tended eyebrow at him. “I think I might recoil as well, Severus.”

Still purring and glittering, he oiled, “No one wants to go up against a rabid Jarvey.”

Crossly, she said, “Oh, Severus, you are _not,_ stop it at once.”

And, as a matter of fact, she thought that it had, perhaps, _not_ been a question of the vampire Prince noticing that he was up against an insane wizard who wouldn’t notice he’d been defeated until he woke up in the infirmary with both Narcissa and Madam Pomfrey scolding him.

To everyone’s unending discomfort and despair, DADA had been a class that Narcissa’s form had shared with Gryffindor. She distinctly remembered Graves telling Evans that no, holding up a cross would do her no good at all unless she was wielding it with a ferocious faith fueled with not only all the force of her magic but real conviction—but not telling Evans that this would, by definition, be dark magic. Severus had complained about that later, tediously and at length but correctly. As usual.

At the time, though, Sirius, the ass, had asked, “What if I _really believe_ in my quill?”

Graves had rolled her eyes, and said, “In that highly unlikely event, Mr. Black, it would work just as well as Miss Evans’s books tell her a cross would.”

And then Severus had put up an earnest hand and asked what if someone put Black under an Imperius curse so that he _would_ really believe in his penknife as a religious weapon. Narcissa had been able to tell Severus later that Graves had said it wouldn’t work because false conviction was by definition unreal. This had been possible because since she’d been close enough to the front to read the professor’s lips.

No one had been able to _hear_ anything: Potter had predictably decided to take words that emerged from Severus’s lips as a threat to his friend. Equally predictably, Siri had until then seemed to think Severus’s question was not only normal and reasonable but interesting. Afterwards, of course, he’d felt obliged to not only back his friend up but to take the suggestion that he ought to feel offended and threatened and run away to Wales with it.

Sirius actually _was_ a rabid Jarvey. He certainly spoke like one—not even out of instinct instilled by poor childhood training, but because he liked to. Narcissa did hope Severus would cooperate and remember he was at worst a rabid occamy or kneazle before she had to point out to him the sad comparison he had unwittingly drawn.

“Oh, well, if you insist,” Severus did, in fact cooperate—not as if he realized his danger, but obligingly, as though to humor her.

 _Suspiciously_ obligingly, in Narcissa’s opinion. There was something entirely off about him today; it was something like the same sort of anticipatory buzz he’d used to get when he knew Slughorn was going to have them make something ‘interesting’ in class, only more restless and distractible and jumpy.

Only it wasn’t the usual Severus-jumpy. Although he was startling when the underbrush rustled, he didn’t seem to have any real concerns that the rabbits were going to attack.

Gratifyingly (if worryingly) oblivious to her suspicion, he rattled on, “In any case, they wouldn’t let me have any samples to take home, but ‘Baron Sanguini,’ which is to say, Sylvester Prince, has scheduled at least a first lab date with me and Maestra de Medici. She’s agreed to chaperone as long as she gets at least a mention in the text of the paper—I explained it’s a thesis, not a regular publication, so she agreed to forgo co-author status. And since he won’t do it without a chaperone who’s both ‘of his blood’ and known to him and frankly I prefer to have someone else in the room myself, I must perforce agree. Besides, she seems reasonably intelligent and might well have something useful to add. It’ll most likely have to be in a Romanian or Italian lab, but with an IAMB-accredited de Medici’s teeth sunk into the project, I don’t expect more than a token protest from the Ministry regarding my travel plans.”

“Well, I hope not,” she mostly agreed, drifting up from the log. Later there would be letters to write, if only because Severus became most _counterproductive_ when he was thwarted by utterly mundane and even more utterly predictable things he disapproved of philosophically and had therefore forgotten to account for. The active search for self-interest by Ministry officials for instance. The forgetting was charmingly Puffy of him, but the inevitable overreaction would be tedious and noisy. To say nothing of the other inevitability that by the time she was subjected to it, he would already have offended everyone he needed.

Just now, however, there was a juniper tree she hadn’t noticed before, with some lovely purple columbine twining around its branches that would accent the Russian sage beautifully. She broke off a heavily berried branch well wound about with flowers and brought it back for Severus’s basket. “That ought to be willow,” she said severely, apropos of nothing, and changed the grass of it with her wand. “I wish I had a lotus flower. Oh, or some lemon verbena, that would smell divine with the sage.”

“Would it?” Severus asked, his head tilted in a quirky quarter of a smile. “I could conjure you a lotus if you’d like to eat one.”

“I can tell you’re being wicked even when I don’t know what it’s about, you know,” she scolded him, looking about in case she could find some verbena after all.

“Mm,” he hummed infuriatingly. “What did you mean, you hope not?”

“Oh…” it was her turn to feel a bit restless and anxious. “Only… only that it’s gone a bit tense at home, you know. I’m sure Reggie’s told you.”

“Well,” Severus said cautiously, planting his hands against the mossy log and leaning back with a coiled curve to his back, “He did mention he’d personally had a rough day of it recently. And I did hear something from Evans about the Ministry getting its back up a bit, but she didn’t really say what that meant.”

“Oh, it’s so absurd,” she said crossly. “The Ministry’s starting to show up at people’s doors asking to search for Dark objects and curses—for our protection, of course, using the pretext that those awful people appeared just out of nowhere in the Portkey Office, which is Ministry-protected, and so how can anyone be certain of their own wards.”

“Are they showing up at the right doors?” Severus asked cynically.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by the ‘right’ ones,” she was careful to say, “but aside from their own members, who’ve naturally all volunteered, and Morgana only knows how much time they gave themselves to prepare, most of the visits seem to be at the Houses of families who have always been good, traditional witches and wizards, or who were known to think Grindelwald might not have been completely mad.”

“I meant the right homes to outrage everybody,” Severus said, equally carefully. “And it sounds as if they are. You’re describing some very fine old families, and of course Grindelwald’s methods and his motives, as everyone’s, are separate matters to be judged separately. But surely they can’t just go in.”

“No-o,” she agreed, stopping her face from making a face, “but they _can_ tell the Prophet to make a meal of it when they’re denied, and to call it terribly suspicious and all that.”

“How… impertinent.”

“Oh, I don’t think I should have called the Ministry impertinent, Severus,” she said gently.

“Out loud,” he finished for her, with that long twist of a smile that served him for a grin.

Ignoring this accuracy, she finished for herself, “I would have said _rude._ ” It would have been pleasant to think that this sort of behavior would provoke the appropriate outrage, but the war for control of the Prophet’s editorial page was always a most delicate field of financial mayhem. The current editor, not unreasonably, found Abraxas a touch offputting, and the _dear_ old man was being sadly overprotective when it came to overburdening Lucius. It was true that her husband could be unsubtle and come across a touch on the pompous side when he was either nervous or overconfident, but since only experience would remedy that, it wasn’t a credible excuse at all.

“How fallible of me,” Severus agreed solemnly, and waved his wand to produce—some sort of flower. She didn’t really notice, because she’d spotted a cluster of gorgeous, lush ferns that she _had_ to have for his basket.

When she got back to him, he was still holding out a little nosegay of larkspur and white lilac with his eyes all crinkled up: laughing at her ‘humility.’ She sniffed at him, wove it into a coronet, and settled it onto her head, turning her nose up at him.

He rose, and held out a hand to her. “Had enough of a walk?”

“I suppose so,” she agreed, taking his arm, although she did rather feel the basket was a bit empty. “It is lovely here, though. I wouldn’t have thought a mountain wood like this would be such a garden.”

“Perhaps it’s blooming for you,” he said.

She eyed him. His tone had been gallant, but just a touch bland. It made her think that it _was_ blooming for her, because he’d enchanted it to, and that he wouldn’t tell her why yet, should she ask.

So she didn’t. Even though she had a nagging feeling that she really ought to know. This was Severus: he was only an excruciatingly annoying _boy_ about keeping secrets from you when it involved a present he thought was his best work but was somehow still certain you weren’t going to like. She’d seen him set traps for people, and this was simply not what his face did at those times.

In any case, those people generally deserved it, and there were, as far as she was aware, about six of them in the world, of whom she was not one. He wasn’t that stupid.

Instead, she told him how furious Bella had been when the Ministry had turned up at their father’s door, as they walked back towards the Bulgarian Embassy, plucking the occasional flower or sprig of sweet grass that caught her eye.

It had been silly of Bella to feel threatened as well as outraged, she felt. Mother was always entertaining; there was nothing the Ministry could have found without doing a much deeper dive than concern for the safety of a great and noble House could have warranted. That would have exposed _them_ to exactly the same sort of publicity they’d used to shame the Parkinsons.

She and Lucius were safe for the moment, she considered. His father had always been too busy being aggressive about the family wealth to be quite so ostentatious about the family’s values, and the two of them had not only enough of their own friends among the up-and-comers of the Ministry to make things a bit awkward, but had Slughorn’s warm approval on their side.

But that only meant they had time to get the Manor in order while firming up their friendships. Lucius might not have realized that yet, but she supposed that he didn’t have to, having married her.

She smiled at Severus as she stooped to snatch up a handful of hawkweed: no one would have had to tell _him_ that, even though he wasn’t a Black witch by birth. She was so glad he hadn’t needed her to marry him. She couldn’t have done it and wouldn’t have wanted to, and he was the sort of person who made you want to give him what he needed because you knew he’d never ask, and wouldn’t accept if you offered unless you bashed him over the head and used a sticking charm to get it into his pockets while he was unconscious.

She was nearly equally glad, for more or less the same reason, that Evvie wasn’t the sort of person who worried about his welcome. Anyone who did anything other than comfortably assume themselves welcome with Severus got their faces bitten off, and sometimes even then.

“Narcissa?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Er… why are you cuddling me?”

“Am I, darling?” she asked in surprise, blinking.

“Er, well, my arm, a bit. Erm, we’ve been out of the forest for a good street and a half, Narcissa.” Which meant he was feeling stared-at.

“It will raise your stock no end,” she said firmly, and airily refused to even look at what she was sure was a dreadfully pained expression. “Goodness, but they do have a lot of roses in the windows!”

“They are very proud of their roses here, yes,” he said, that pained expression ringing in his voice.

“I suppose it’s made Evan entirely insufferable,” she smiled, giving his arm another squeeze.

“Evan is always entirely insufferable,” he agreed, in her favorite long-suffering tone. You had to know him before you knew it meant he was deeply, deeply happy. In fact, it neither sounded nor looked like the others, but while his transports of meltingly delighted affection looked like nothing else ever found on _his_ face, they looked exactly like profoundly annoyed resignation did on anyone else’s.

“Will we have a rosehip tea?” she asked playfully. “I shouldn’t mind a spot of tea before long, I think.”

“Perhaps we’ll have some in a bit, then,” he replied, “but I need to do a small errand first, if you don’t mind.”

She shot him a _really, couldn’t you have planned your day better than to take a guest on an errand_ look, to which he responded with a stubborn and silent _I’m doing exactly what I mean to do and you’ll only fruitlessly spoil the day for both of us if you insist on pointing out how wrongheaded I am._

With a sigh for the fact that a pigheaded, mannerless twit was the only person in her life to deserve the status of ‘favorite sister,’ she let him escort her further into town.

At least he didn’t seem to be in one of his hurries, and was willing to amble along with her, although she wasn’t entirely sure what kind of teasing he was doing when he turned to a street vendor and bought her a paper cone of roasted walnuts with a pretty comment about nothing daring to stain her delicate porcelain fingers. She was rather afraid that the teasing might only have been distraction: that he was offering her something to eat because he didn’t intend to have tea.

He stopped her in front of one of the many doors, ‘closed’ only by mostly tapestries that in most cases had seen better days, that alternated with striking black-and-white striped columns along the left length of Ustra castle’s Veiled market square. Which was nearly empty at the moment, although it looked as though one or two merchants might have hired some of the less fortunate to save them the best places. No stalls were in evidence, but the tents were… charming, in a grub—or rather, a rustic sort of way.

“I had to go in as soon as I saw the sign,” Severus noted at the door, whose faded tapestry showed a willow-like tree. A _Whomping_ Willow, although one that looked more inclined to dance and, perhaps, strangle, than maim. Its long leaves looked like red-veined crow quills. He had on one of the nonexpressions that someone else might not have recognized as a quiet smile. “It seemed a good omen, having Marcus Aurelius over the door.”

She looked at the words at the top of the tapestry, which were in unapologetic Cyrillic. “I’m afraid I haven’t cast any translation spells for reading today, darling. It didn’t seem worth it, when I’d be with you the whole trip. You know how odd it is when you go back to English and they’re still on.”

He commented on what she was sure he saw as her laziness by not commenting on it, and merely read, “ _Dushata stava boyadisani._ The full quote is, ‘The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.’”

“That’s lovely, Severus,” she said warmly, eying the store with some trepidation.

“He was, rather. Or, at least, rather wise. Or, at the very least, clever enough for his job, which, let us be just, is saying something. Let’s go in.”

“Let’s not,” she proposed a more viable alternative.

He swept the tapestry aside for her.

With a sigh, she stepped inside.

And felt more comfortable at once. The walls were draped with more tapestries, and some of them were also faded or a bit tattered around the edges, but these were very familiar looking. They weren’t the trees of families she personally knew, but they were old and tangled and rich with the history of these mountains.

It was a history which was quite as ancient and steeped in magical nobility as her own island, as she would staunchly and graciously maintain until the very second she got back home. At which point it would no longer be impolite to remember how very muddled lines of succession could become in the haze of a Continental war. Or how seldom it was that the world lacked a Continental war.

The tapestries made her feel more at home, and the embroidered fish swimming through their waving, quilted reeds on the carpet were soothing and not notably shabby, but this was not the sort of establishment into which Narcissa had ever ventured. There were racks of… of, perhaps, wands on the walls. They looked almost exactly like wands.

Then again, given that she’d come in here with Severus, they might just as easily have been stirring rods: not more than a handfui of them were made of wood. Like stirring rods and unlike most wands, the wood was all bare, unvarnished, and their lengths were almost uniform—all short for wands, straight, and untwisted, despite some variation in the style of the handles. Unlike stirring rods, though, there were far more of metal than wood or even stone, and they all, to a one, tapered to needle-sharpness.

Before she could get a look at all the trinkets, each displayed like museum pieces, in the rough-hewn, well-polished shelves, Severus had stepped forward to speak with the shopkeep.

Who looked like nearly-human-sized, red-haired Hagrid, in Narcissa’s opinion, if paler and with more freckles. He dressed like Hagrid, at any rate, and his beard was quite as much of a disaster, though he’d made at least some attempt to bind back the crushed handful of wires that Narcissa supposed he must call his hair.

“Ilinov!” the fellow boomed, coming to meet Severus with a hearty back-slap that probably shook his teeth and every bone down to his toes, poor toast-rack. “You have come back!”

“Am I supposed to call you that?” Narcissa whispered quickly. This was behavior unworthy even of Reggie, she realized as soon as the words had escaped her. On the other hand, she reassured herself, if Severus got into trouble by failing to warn her about a need for complete discretion with so little time to prepare herself while already in such alien environs, it was entirely on his own head and he deserved it.

“No,” Severus replied in a normal tone, not noticeably reproachfully, “we’re not come under any false pretenses. By the time I met Maïstor Mastilov, I had come to the conclusion that I was tired of the way our guide was mispronouncing my name, and preferred to give the good Maïstor my matronymic so as to be less annoyed while speaking with him.”

“Milka Karkaroff never beat little Igor enough,” the Hagrid opined wisely. “But,” he shrugged and made a philosophical noise, “the crow cannot become a dove.”

“But a young swan can be mistaken for the ugliest of ducklings,” Narcissa smiled charmingly at him, her nails sinking warningly into her duckling’s long-cuffed sleeve.

“Hristo, may I present Maïster Schwarzrosiger’s cousin, Gospozhitsa Black,” Severus said dryly, adding as an aside to her, “It means ‘Mistress, as in Miss-or-Mrs. There is a Miss and a Mrs., but on the premise that discretion is the better part of valor, I’ve declined to learn them. I have no wish to be beaten to death with a parasol for guessing wrongly.” She could tell he wanted to step on her foot in retaliation, but he hadn’t actually _done_ that in years, even in private.

She smiled prettily, reflecting that even if they weren’t there under false pretenses, Severus was certainly doing his awkward best to be discreet. He wasn't in any way making it impossible for the fellow to decipher who they were, so she concluded that he was merely trying to keep his and Evan’s names from being set down In the shop’s physical records. She herself, she noticed, either didn’t merit or wasn’t considered to need such careful consideration.

“Narcissa, Maïstor Hristopher Mastilov.”

“Ahh,” Mastilov said—again, sagely—pounding Severus on the back. Again. “So, then, you are serious, Ilinov!”

“Always,” Severus said, very nearly as if he believed himself.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Narcissa said demurely, with a curve to her smile that should have told Severus he was going to have to do some fast talking and faster groveling to make up for putting her in a position where she had to do anything so crass as pry, “but what is it that you’re serious about, just at the moment?”

Severus looked, to her eyes, abruptly embarrassed. “I’ve asked a service of Maïstor Mastilov. He requires certain assurances before he may legally provide it.” Which meant _and I don’t want to raise suspicion by trying to dodge_. “They have to come from a relative of Evan’s.”

She allowed herself to look a bit cross, although not actually to frown. She needed to keep as much out of the muck of his and Lucius’s work as possible. Everyone she knew was in such a hurry to rush into trouble that it was absolutely vital that _someone_ hold back and wait for them to need rescuing. “Really, darling, if you needed a testimonial, I’m sure Reggie—”

“I preferred to ask you to join me, today,” Severus said, looking at her with more gravity than she felt was called for. Which meant there was indeed something going on, and she hadn’t the _least_ idea what it was. She sighed.

“Well, well, then let us see to it,” the Hagrid declared, bustling Severus into a chair and pulling another out for Narcissa. “First: can it be done for you?”

Narcissa had the irritated sensation that the landscape had gone astray, and she was going to have to track down the bits that she recognized. Really, Severus was _so_ irksome sometimes.

“What he means,” Severus answered her annoyance, “is: will you vouch that Evan would consent to my using his blood for personal reasons.”

She checked herself, trying not to stare at him. In truth the answer, when she’d got over the bizarrity of the question, was that _of course_ Evan would ‘consent’ to that; Evvie would probably consent if Severus asked for one of his _bones_ for ‘personal reasons.’

Severus wasn’t above sneaky, surprise gifts. Quite the reverse, in fact, and so Narcissa might have assumed he’d talked the shopkeep around into allowing Evan’s consent to be by proxy.

Except that there were considerably more than three chairs in the room. She hadn’t paid much attention it before, but there were enough chairs clustered around the low counter for a small family conference. And _four_ of them were clearly chairs for guests of honor, such as would be reserved for one’s grandparents or great-grandparents. Would be reserved, put in plain speech stripped of sentimentality, for the Masters and Mistresses of one’s blood-Houses.

What Severus wanted mustn’t normally require the consent of the blood-donor, because that was assumed, Narcissa concluded. It _normally_ needed the blessing of the families and the Houses of both of the young idiots involved, who _as a rule_ should not be trusted to know their own minds.

Narcissa kept her face pleasantly skeptical as she deman—inquired, “And what would those reasons be, darling?” Inside, however, in silent, dawning delight, she started to plot bridesmaids’ robes that clashed horribly with dark red hair. And, of course, to design formal robes that it would be physically or magically possible to bully Severus into wearing. He was sure to insist that something soberly professional would do, the goose.

Severus got that look that meant he wanted to drop his face behind his hair and mumble and quite possibly kick a hole into the ground that he might crawl into. Just a touch too quickly, he did, in fact, mumble, “EryouknowEvan’stree.”

“I’m sorry, darling?” she prompted, because he not only deserved but was begging for it.

Scowling at her, he snapped, “Evan’s _tree._ On his arm.”

She permitted herself a moment of intense disappointment while she put her event-planning on hold… again. “You want one?” she asked kindly, dimpling to torture him with how _sweet_ he was being. Even if he was, unlike Evvie, approaching the sober matter of sealing his alliances very nearly like a normal and responsible wizard. Evan hadn’t even waited to reach seventeen, let alone declared himself to either of their parents or House heirs. Really she ought to be praising him for remembering to make sure _someone_ in Evvie’s family approved.

Still, she’d thought for one shining moment he was about to be _really reasonable_ and let Evan’s father and Aunt Dru relax about their House’s future. Not to mention giving Narcissa and Aunt Dru and Mother something more colorful to talk about than Draco’s nappies. And he was boorishly refusing to tell her what it _was_ all about. One had to have some compensation, and it was this:

He glared. Helplessly. Like a little cornered goat. Because, just at the moment, he needed her.

“Did you…” she waved a couple of fingers in lieu of describing sordid things, “contribute to his, darling?”

“No,” he said in an ominous _not yet_ tone, and caught her eye to ask keenly, “but you’ll also attest that that’s only because he didn’t think of it or didn’t think I’d agree if he asked, won’t you? Or, at least, he wasn’t even old enough to get one then, properly, but you’ll agree he wouldn’t object to the idea now.”

Narcissa would not, herself, have liked at all to have Lucius’s blood under her skin. It seemed so unhygienic, even with magic to purify it. Evvie had never been as squeamish as one might have thought to look at him and his haberdashery, though, and he could be awfully Hufflepuff at the oddest times. “I suppose not in _principle,_ ” she agreed cautiously. “It would all depend.”

“Just so,” Severus agreed, trying not to roll his eyes because he did, in fact, need her.

“But how did you get his blood, darling?” she asked pointedly. “I assume you already have it.”

“Used a collection vial; he didn’t feel a thing,” Severus shrugged.

She looked disapproving.

Crossly, Severus pointed out, “He could have painted a hundred portraits of me sleeping against my express wishes, you know. I regard that possibility as…” he paused, and pursed his lips grimly. “As moderately unlikely, but if he does it, I’ll be in no doubt as to why.   We’d have a fight if I found out, make no mistake, but I wouldn’t be outraged or shocked. There’s theft for one’s own profit, and there’s appropriation for the purposes of meddling. You _cannot_ deny that he extends me the privilege of meddling.”

She shot him an _I can deny whatever I please_ look, but raised a gracious hand in agreement even before he started trotting out evidence she was almost certainly better off not knowing about.

“Then,” put in the Hagrid with shaggy-bear affability, “it is only to make certain—for my records, you will understand, we must take care in these matters to protect the families and the young people—that the lovely lady is a blood relation to your, did you say, collection vial.”

Narcissa, very quietly, sighed.

It didn’t take long, though; the man merely passed a wand over her wrist and Severus’s vial, and then said how pleased he was that ‘Ilinov’ had been able to bring as close a relative as a first cousin if he couldn’t bring Evan’s mother. It looked better in the records; he was sure they understood.

“Perfectly,” they said together, drily, while Narcissa pitied a nation so decimated that cousins were considered close relations. Then Severus started fussing with the man about types of wood and fruit versus flowers and the feasibility of coal.

Narcissa concluded she’d completely misunderstood everything and Severus was brewing something strange after all. Since Severus had given her an alarmed and cautioning and pleading and, she might even go so far as to say, panicky look when she’d stood to leave them, she summoned her elf instead, and had Melly bring her correspondence.

Only halfway through making sure none of her refusals to garden teas and so on sounded exactly alike, she got the feeling that someone was looking at her. Lifting her gaze, she saw that it was Severus, and he was squirming. “Yes, darling?” she asked pleasantly. Evan thought that Severus ought to be discouraged from squirming when he didn’t deserve to feel guilty, but Narcissa disagreed. Only insofar as it applied to her, of course.

“Er,” Severus began, in his very-nearly-apologetic voice, which wasn’t so much apology as embarrassment, truth to tell. Except when it was directed at Evans, when it was not so much embarrassed as embarrassing. “Hristo needs an affidavit.”

She went on looking pleasantly at him.

He gave up on weaseling, which also made him stop squirming and hunching. It was just as well, really; he made a much more appealing hawk than a vulture. Anyone would. More firmly, he said, “You’ll have to watch so you can attest it’s really Ev’s blood being used, as his family’s representative.”

She sighed. “You realize that this is all awfully suspicious, darling, and the only reason I’m going along with it is that I rather think you might actually chew your own wand-hand off rather than hurt him especially badly.”

Severus considered this. Dubiously, he allowed, “I’m not so ambidexterous as I’d like, but I suppose people have learned to cast with their off-hands before, when circumstances wouldn’t let them decide the project was low-priority. The prospect is fairly horrific, but I suppose we do have better prostheses than muggles… still, Narcissa, I’m sure he’d advise me against it.”

Narcissa closed her eyes expressively, so he wouldn’t see her doing anything so vulgar and childish as rolling them. There was probably something to be said for reducing the amount of time one spent with one’s childhood friends. Friends as strange and clever as Severus didn’t pall, but they also never stopped evoking responses one usually considered oneself to have long since outgrown.

When she’d counted to ten, remembered where all the letters were in finger-ogham, and taken one more bracing breath for good measure, she opened her eyes again and asked, “How much are you going to owe me for this, darling?”

He tilted his head and squinted at the ceiling. Thoughtfully, he decided, “I’d say it’s a tossup between your deciding, by the end of the day, that I don’t owe you anything because you’re delighted and that I don’t owe you anything because you’ve murdered me.”

“You’re being very mysterious,” she didn’t grumble at all.

“Yes, well,” he didn’t disagree, most unhelpfully, and turned to walk through a tapestry, which didn’t move aside for him as he disappeared behind it.

Alone, Narcissa drummed her fingers on the table, and considered having Melly take her home. Severus was really being _awfully_ provoking. The only thing stopping her was that he was clearly doing it out of nerves this time, not to be smug about his own cleverness. Even that was a thin rope indeed: that toss-up line had been very deliberate bait.

In the end, though, she knew that whatever he was baiting her into, it wasn’t a trap. It would be against both his character and his interests, and she’d given him no reason to.

On the other side of the tapestry, Severus was in a chair, and he wasn’t even in shirtsleeves, just his vest and his flex-release wand-sheath, which had been one of the first things he’d ever bought for himself with real money, covering his Dark Mark. The vest was black, with buttons over his shoulders, of all things, and made him look far paler than the usual horrible greeny-blue-brown mossy-slate colors that no one with his coloring should have even walked near.

Then again, he might have genuinely been paler than usual, because the Hagrid-man had one of those metal wands _pierced into his skin,_ below the wand-sheath, in the blue-shadowed tangle of blood vessels in his wrist.

“Doesn’t that hurt, darling?” she asked, trying to sound more amused than tentative. He might not be able to tell her if it was doing anything beyond hurting at the moment. Clearly it was _meant_ to do something real, but he still might not want to discuss it in front of the artisan.

The Hagrid-man grinned at her without really looking up, a flash of yellow teeth in his dull ginger beard. “Is not so bad,” he assured her, drawing a second, wooden wand carefully across Severus’s skin while keeping the metal one perfectly still.

“It’s not like… any other sort,” Severus said carefully. He wasn't bleeding and didn’t look as though it hurt him, exactly, but he did rather look as though he were trying to work on an essay in the library while refusing to acknowledge that Siri was flicking hexed spitballs at his back. “Not like the sort that uses small needles to deliver inks or potions, where any magic is liquid, which I’m told is indeed painful, or a literal or magical… brand. It feels like water wearing easy channels into sand, and my flesh is the sand, moving aside for it, but also like growing scales, but then the scales aren’t there.”

“That is because you choose the wood,” the man told him, moving his second wand in careful stripes that ended in tight little clusters of what she assumed were runes he and Severus had agreed on. “The heart of the wood grows in your skin, but you do not grow bark, only the heart.”

“That would be a quite different spell,” Severus said dryly, and was told to stop talking because he moved a little when he talked.

To Narcissa’s astonishment, _that worked._ She made much of sitting down in shock with a hand fluttering to her throat, and got scowled at.

_But not barked at!_

If only she thought it would work in other circumstances!

The drawing of invisible stripes went on for a few minutes. Narcissa had to charm the shoulder-straps of Severus’s vest unbuttoned for the man, which made Severus hideously and delightfully and well-deservedly uncomfortable. Then he switched to a third wand, also wooden but a different wood, and repeated the whole business, with the stripes going in another direction.

By the time he’d finished and pulled the metal wand out with a hasty healing spell, pale shadows were beginning to struggle up on Severus’s wrist. They began, curling and elegant, about an inch up from where his shirt-cuff would end, wrapping around to the other side of his arm where the straight, diagonal stripes began.

Narcissa couldn’t make sense of it. She asked, “How can you see what you’re doing, Maïstor?”

“Ah, but I can see it very well, Gospozhitsa,” he said, wagging a knowing finger at her.

Severus, who had no sense of decorum except when he did, rolled his eyes. “I have on an area— _finite!_ I had on an area-specific glamour. He had lines to follow until just now.”

She pursed her lips ominously at him.

“You’ll see it when it’s _done,_ ” he said stubbornly.

“Just at the moment,” she said, her tone matching her expression, “I haven’t seen anything about which I could make any sort of Evvie-related affidavit.”

“Well, no, there hasn’t been anything yet,” Severus agreed. “This,” he gestured dismissively at the rapidly-fading pink knut-sized oval on his own wrist where the metal wand had pierced, “is just a… a framework. Now you’re here we can,” he made another gesture, helpless. “We can do that.”

“Here, here,” the Hagrid-man encouraged, picking up a small worktable of polished marble and crashing it down at Severus’s elbow. Severus jumped, of course.  

The Bulgarian, or whatever he was, unrolled a cloth over the marble—raw blue silk, with an embroidered array in thread-of-gold that spoke of swallowing and transformation and gifts and seamless joining. She wasn’t good enough at arithmancy to be able to read its exact purpose, but what she could read made her rather nervous about it. “So!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

Severus and Narcissa looked at each other. Severus seemed rather at a loss. Forbearing to roll her eyes again (she was already well over quota and Severus had told Lucius he might not have her back for supper), she wiggled her fingers to get his attention and signed C-O-M-P-L-I-M-E-N-T \ I-T.

“What fine workmanship,” Severus said dutifully. His tone was rather more _is this what I’m meant to say?_ than convinced, much less admiring. She didn’t blame him. It did look hand-sewn, without the even elegance and detail a wand-driven needle could create.

The man seemed to chalk it up to his accent, fortunately, or perhaps he just wasn’t equipped to notice when a compliment wasn’t full-throated if it wasn’t outright sarcastic. “Yes, yes, my old grandmother, she makes it! No, that is not your word, my grandfather’s grandmother.”

“Great-great grandmother,” Severus told him, suddenly finding the piece of cloth more interesting. The man beamed, presumably thinking Severus was giving his ancestress respect. Narcissa suspected he was really examining it for preservation charms he hadn’t been taught at Hogwarts.

“Well,” the man agreed expansively, and made a put-it-here gesture at the cloth. “You have these things?”

Without nodding, Severus slipped his hand into a breast pocket.

In his _vest!_ Who on _earth_ put pockets in their vests? She was going to have to start overpaying the poor tailor even more, if Severus was being this absurd. Then again, he might be adding them himself. She wouldn’t have put it past him. Not head-butting his way past a tailor’s garment-finishing protection spells so as to alter the garment, and not thinking it was in any way acceptable to do so.

When he brought his hand out again, it was curled protectively around the staid, cylindrical amber-glass vial of Evan’s blood (ugh) he’d had before, but then he brought out another. This one was clearly one of Evvie’s special wand-blown vials made for sale: a rose-red crystal swan that glittered like autumn in the shop’s many magically-bright candles. Narcissa couldn’t imagine that he’d allowed Severus to buy it from him, but since it was obvious that Evvie had no idea they were here, she also sincerely doubted that Severus had asked to borrow it. But it wasn’t the sort of thing she thought Evan would think Severus would like, or an idea she thought he’d come up with on his own. Not a _red_ swan.

“Did you tell him you didn’t think he could make it?” she smiled, coming to her conclusion.

“Well,” he said judiciously, “I told him it was so unnatural that he couldn’t make one that would be lovely enough that it wouldn’t make people nervous on an instinctive level, what with red being the blood color and all. Not without turning it into a flamingo.”

“But why, darling?” she demanded, her smile going perplexed.

He paused, in that way that looked a bit lofty but really meant he was feeling a bit caught-out. “I felt he needed to think about color and nonsense. As a palate-cleanser, so to speak. This trip’s been rather hard on him, Narcissa; I believe he’ll be glad to return to work in his usual stomping grounds. He does so want to do well here and make connections for his father’s firm. You understand me.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, frowning just a little, without letting her lips really crease. “Yes, my husband did say he was fretting about…” she waved a hand.

Of course, what she meant, and expected Severus to hear, was that _Lucius_ was fretting about the effectiveness of Evan’s efforts for the association that all the wizards involved had decided to bother her by getting themselves entwined into. Which was, indeed, largely Evan’s father’s doing, as well as Lucius’s.

Growing impatient, the Hagrid-man made a grab for the red swan.

Narcissa hadn’t finished flinching from the crash of the marble table on the floor before an ice-faced Severus was three steps closer to the door in a textbook dueling pose, wand drawn on the poor proprietor. It seemed excessive: Severus had already swaddled him up like a spider’s supper in some sort of thick dark stuff that was as much like cloth as webbing, and as much like shadow as cloth.

“Oh, darling, _really,_ ” she cried reproachfully, and moved forward with a cutting charm and her prettiest manner. “Maïstor Hristopher, I’m ever so sorry, I _do_ hope you’ll forgive my friend? He doesn’t mean it, you know, it was only because you moved so quickly. He can be awfully jumpy, poor pet. I don’t know if you can understand it—”

“No, no,” the man waved her off, red-faced and gasping a little into his prickly beard. “No, only I did not think—you are both children, too young!”

“That’s what they said at the pub,” Severus muttered over Narcissa’s indignant sniff, letting his wand drift out of ready as his shoulders started to crawl up and his face to creep behind his hair. Letting the impertinence of ‘children’ go (after all, Severus _hadn’t_ introduced her so as to clarify that she was a married woman, and it would only have been good manners if he hadn’t been listening to their private conversation), she came up behind him and took his bare arm. Shadows were still fading in and out in a grid pattern over it, but she didn’t mind that. It was something he’d intended, so it wouldn’t do her any harm.

“Yes, yes, the old men, they are saying ‘Drink with Rosy-yurr and work with Snyep,” Mastilov agreed.

In return for Severus only punching her hard in the stomach with his sourest glower rather than his actual bony elbow, Narcissa did her very best to only die laughing with her eyes rather than her actual voice and breath. Not in the least because apparently he’d been telling the truth earlier, which meant had been a waste of effort to remember not to use either of his real names. Although she might as well keep that up at this point, she supposed.

“But your Albus Dumbledore,” Mastilov pointed out, mauling the old man’s name even worse than Evvie’s as he hauled his little table upright and checked his great-great-grandmother’s cloth for damage, “he kept your England out of the war!”

“Not all wars are fought with armies and trumpeted with newspapers,” Severus muttered, fully retreated behind his black curtain now, staring at a corner of the floor like an humiliated vulture.

She drew him back towards his chair. “It’s all right, Naja,” she murmured, petting his bare arm. “Come sit down again, darling. Put your shirt back on, you’ll feel better.” Louder, remembering that she ought to defer to the man who’d just been knocked about in his own shop in his own country in which they were guests, she asked, “May he dress, Maïstor?”

“Oh, yes, yes, no problem, put the things on, please, Ilinov,” Mastilov agreed distractedly, looking around on the floor for something. “My wand, do you see it?”

Severus twitched his wand-hand silently, and the metal wand rolled out from under a cabinet.

“Ah! I find it,” Mastilov announced with satisfaction. “Now! We try again?”

“Thank you,” Severus managed to say with dignified rather than crawling humility. She waited until he’d finished dressing again and sat down, and rubbed his shoulders. He sighed, and leaned back dolefully into her hands while Mastilov fussed with the cloth.

Evvie must be used to it, but if Lucius’s shoulders ever felt like Severus’s did, Narcissa wouldn’t merely be annoyed with him for letting himself go, she’d be afraid he’d got as sick as his dreadful father. She was entirely pleased that Evan’s tastes were different from her own, of course, but still, she thought perhaps she’d better have a talk with her cousin. He was a bit too inclined to believe that Severus knew what was best and had a tidy mind and would only do absurd and unhelpful things like missing meals if he had a good-to-middling reason for it.

As opposed to _I was in the middle of the chapter and I wasn’t hungry enough to faint yet._ Which was an explanation Severus had actually given her once, very nearly in those words. To do him justice, it had been during fifth year and she’d quite understood why he’d wanted to avoid the Great Hall.

He still might have gone to the kitchens, if he hadn’t had anything stored away. Which he had. There had been an apple and a bunch of radishes in his pocket while he’d been saying that. She knew, because when she’d cast _Accio food Severus should be eating this very minute_ they’d come flying out.

It _was_ possible he’d forgotten he’d had it. Entirely, tragically, thoroughly possible.

It was less possible that he’d forgotten to button his shirt or waistcoat. She eyed him suspiciously. Ignoring her gaze, of which he was certainly aware, he suggested to Mastilov, “Perhaps the other first, Maïstor?”

Mastilov slapped him on the shoulder commiseratingly, and said, “Do not take it to heart, Ilinov. Every battlefield’s carrion-field hatches a liderc to prey on its victors.”

Severus blinked, and after a moment said dryly, “That may be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever heard, and that’s saying something.”

“Sorry, darling?” Narcissa asked.

He blinked again, seeming to come back into focus. “That’s right, you didn’t take Care of Magical Creatures,” he remembered. “In Hungary, all nightmares are attributed—folklorically, at least—to the liderc, which is a parasitic metamorph.”

“A metamorphmagus?” she asked, thinking of her adorable niece, who technically Did Not Exist At All and was getting the _sweetest_ parasol for her birthday. It would change color with her moods—and, perhaps, help her learn that sometimes she affected things without controlling them. An especially vital lesson for a little witchlet with her gift, even if she didn’t seem to be getting raised as a Black witch. Which was dreadful, but the thing would have been impossible for Andi almost on her own with that stupid mudblooded lump for a husband even if she’d wanted to, Narcissa had to admit.

The parasol, of course, didn’t exist either. Formally speaking. But that was all right, as long as Father didn’t have to hear about it. And he didn’t, because Narcissa’s expenses now came out of _Malfoy_ money. And if Twillfit could be trusted to keep his temper for two years and not tell Severus ‘you are paying less than half-price’ to get one over on what was almost certainly one of the most aggravating and honorable customers he had, he could unquestionably be trusted not to make Cygnus Black apoplectic enough to decapitate the messenger.

“No, they’re not mages, not human; Kettleburn wasn’t entirely clear on whether they’re intelligent at all,” Severus explained. Mastilov had gone to the fireplace and was doing something careful with a tiny wand-operated bellows and a single glowing ember. “They’re hatched from certain eggs nested in, er, unpleasant warm places. I don’t mean unpleasantly warm. I mean you don’t want me to go into detail.”

“Don’t, then,” she agreed.

“There are two species, actually; one assumes several categories of shapes—leaves horse footprints, has been spotted as a firebird, that sort of thing. The other has only been spotted in humanoid form, but they’re both a succubus/incubus sort of parasite. The only-humanoid version may really be normal vampires that have got conflated with the other sort, actually; Kettleburn wasn’t sure, but they have a more symbiotic relationship with their victims. They take small amounts of blood over time and share hoarded wealth along with, er, themselves. Well, there’s talk of it looking like a chicken sometimes, but I have the _impression_ that’s only because it’s supposed to have hatched from an egg, but then again—”

“I see,” she said primly.

“Yes,” he hurried on. “The other sort smacks a bit of the second brother’s downfall in the story of the Three Brothers: it takes on the shape of the victims’ beloved departed. And it’s a filthy, pyromaniac plague-spreader which is _chased off_ by rooster-crow, so there might be some sort of race war going on there, one supposes.”

“One really doesn’t,” she told him repressively. “Severus, darling, will you please stop reading me a lecture in a class I chose not to take and tell me what your friend _meant_?”

Looking just a touch hurt before he turned it into grumpiness, Severus disgruntled, “He meant that the fortunate survivors of any sort of traumatic hideousness may forever find boggarts jumping out at them from the corners under their minds at any unexpected moment, and absolutely every expected one.”

Silently, she bent, clasped her hands loosely together over his skinny chest, and rested her chin on his shoulder. He didn’t move, except that he tilted his head a bit so that his cheek just touched her forehead. She squeezed lightly, and they watched the Hagrid-man blow careful plumes of flame over his ember, and sprinkle it with powders so it turned every color there was, and then pour something over it so that it went out with a sizzle.

He came back with it, and Narcissa looked with interest. It was very sparkly now. The roughness of the coal had gone so hard that it caught the light from the candles, not the usual dusty white-black of an ember at all. It was glowing from within, too, a normal-fire colored glow.

Mastilov placed the ember on Severus’s outstretched hand. Severus looked at it critically, and took a few deep breaths. By the end of the last one, he was breathing out white frost, and the air in the room smelled distinctly crisp, with that soggy-heat sag of winter battling it out with a fireplace over where Mastilov had been working with the ember.

First Severus closed his eyes, then the ember iced over, never losing its inner glow under the fuzzy-looking frost. Then the feathery little frost-tendrils cleared and hardened and grew, until the ember was encased in a diamond-clear cauldron of ice. All together, it was no bigger than the first joint of Narcissa’s thumb, and still glowing warmly inside.

Tipping it onto the blue cloth, Severus looked for Mastilov’s pleased nod. Then he pulled down the front of his vest, looking a bit white, touched his wand to his heart, and cast, “ _Micat sanguino._ ”

A spurt of blood fountained from his chest at artery-speed and splashed onto the ember and the cloth. Someone shrieked, high and terrified. Narcissa clawed into Severus’s wand-wrist and yanked his hand away from his body, spun him around in his chair, and slapped him with all her strength.

Then he was hugging her, hard, hugging her hands to her body (which was not subtle at all, the _prat_ ), talking a mile a minute into her hair in his most soothing and repentant voice about how it was completely over, how controlled it had been, how yes, yes, he never _would_ do anything like that again because he absolutely never intended to have to, how he would have warned her if he’d thought for half a second she would have let him do it but really he’d had to and it had been at least 80% of perfectly safe.

At that, she tried to slap him again. Failing that, she kicked him in the shin as hard as she possibly could. She was out of practice, but her shoes were warded against cutpurses and other nuisances and he was gentleman enough not to guard against her when he deserved it.

Also enough of one to make a noise as if he wasn’t wearing his dreadful Quidditch boots and she’d really hurt him, and, once he’d been fool enough to try to _explain_ himself (“I can’t _take without return,_ Narcissa,” as though her problem with this was that she didn’t _understand_ him) and get his foot stomped on for it, to keep embracing her until the shock had worn off and she could breathe almost normally again and dry her eyes.

When he did, warily, let her go, the Hagrid-man was watching them in only mild alarm, as though he’d seen worse at least a dozen times before. He remarked to Severus, “You could have only cut your hand.”

She kicked his foot again, viciously, and told Mastilov, “I’m sure your friend _Ilinov_ knew that. It’s only unfortunate that he’s a _manebrained, melodramatic prat_!”

“Prince,” Severus corrected her gloomily. “I’ve lately been given to understand that I come by it honestly.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and threatened, “If I break my shoes kicking you, you _will_ replace them.” Merlin knew she wanted him to think himself all wizard, which did more or less mean all Prince, but he was _not allowed_ to use it as an excuse for acting like a Gryffie fool! There were just as many ravens as lions in that line, in any case, or nearly.

He held up his hands meekly. She gave a satisfied nod, and, with a flick of her wand, pulled up the chair that was clearly reserved for the client-family’s matriarch to sit down in. She caught Severus stifling a smile, so she kicked him again. Which only made him grin outright, the _prat_ , and, when he saw how irate she was, unapologetically catch up her hand and, still half-grinning, turn it so he could kiss her knuckle without hitting her with his nose.

She sighed, and only just caught herself before she slumped like a schoolgirl. What could you _do_ with a boy like that?

Prepare, that was all. She demanded, “Is that all I’m likely to want to murder you for today?”

He looked shifty. “Er… that’s the only one you’re likely to want to murder me for that Evan and I haven’t planned together as a surprise for you that we at least hope you will, ultimately, like, once you’ve _got over_ potentially wanting to murder me?”

Nothing. There was _absolutely nothing_ you could do with a boy like that. She sighed again, and closed her eyes in despair.

“Er, Narcissa?” Severus asked hesitantly in his dripping-with-guilt-but-don’t-expect-an-apology voice. “This is the other bit you have to witness.” Hastily, he added, “We really do think you will like it in the end, honestly…” The trailing off had a sad, sagging little question-mark of hope screwed loosely onto the end, swinging in the breeze. Except that there wasn’t any breeze in the shop.

Crossly, she informed him, “You are the worst sister _ever._ ”

There was a pause.

In his most awkward explaining voice, Severus said, “No, she knows I’m a wizard, and no, we’re not related.”

“Phineus Nigellus Black,” she reminded him ominously. “I have shown you the extent of his unofficial family tree that we know about. You have been in Dumbledore’s office, _often,_ and seen his portrait’s nose.”

Severus ignored her, as usual. At least this time he didn’t bother arguing artistic malice. “It’s just that while we were at school, wizards were for, er, handling in a certain way, which is to say, as potential spouses who had to be firmly kept in their very specific place. And her female friends also had to be handled in a certain way—”

“Except Lucy,” Narcissa corrected, eyes still shut in sad despair.

“Well, _Wi—_ yes _,_ ” Severus agreed. “She has to be handled in her own way.”

“Oh, as if you ever worked out what it was.”

“I did!” he protested, adding slyly, “Last month.”

Sighing _gustily,_ Narcissa opened her eyes with Great Reluctance, and more than a touch of honest dread.

Completely dressed again, thank Merlin, right down to his cufflinks and cravat pin, Severus was looking at her anxiously (but not, as he ought to have been, because the cufflinks didn’t match). As soon as he saw that he was seen, of course, he pretended he hadn’t been, but she’d caught him, and tucked a little smile away.

Reassured, Severus brought the red swan out again, and tapped its beak with his wand. It split open and a little pile of what looked to Narcissa like bird feed spilled out onto the blue cloth, which was quite clean of both ash and Severus’s blood.

“So many!” Mastilov declared in surprise.

Severus shrugged, with a very faint curl to his lips that the Hagrid-man probably didn’t even notice, let alone recognize as a warm smile. He brought out the vial and asked her, “Are you satisfied that this is Evan’s?”

She raised an imperious eyebrow, because first of all he deserved it and secondly he deserved to have something he was this serious about taken seriously, without room for doubt. Just not to _look_ as if it was being taken seriously. He didn’t deserve that in the least. “Do the test again, please, Maïstor. That’s a quite generic vial, after all.”

Severus gave her a dirty look, but didn’t protest. When the test was done and she had announced herself satisfied, Mastilov unstopped the vial and spilled her cousin’s blood over the little grain-pile. Narcissa wasn’t surprised at the smooth flow; it was more astonishing that Severus’ ingredients vials didn’t visibly glow with all the spellwork he had on them than that there should be a preservation charm in there that prevented coagulation.

Since no one including herself distracted her this time by squirting fountains of vital fluids out of their toast-racks or very-understandably screaming about it, she was able to see that the bird-feed _did_ glow when the blood hit it. Or, rather, the embroidered runes and arrays on the velvet cloth did, and the glow seeped into them. It was swift, with a moment of moving light culminating in a bright golden flash. When it was over, Severus had two enchanted objects in his hand, both about the size of one of Narcissa’s thumbnails, both teardrop-shaped.

Only the ember, now cased in a glittering drop of what could have been crystal or ice, was emitting actual light, and that only from the heat in its belly. Both it and the now clumped-together heap of bird-feed, however, emitted the _feeling_ of light: that unmistakable enchanted sensation that felt, in the pulse and bones of a witch, like looking at the air over a flat road on a day when the air was enough to burn an unsuspecting sitter.

Narcissa watched dubiously while Severus scooped them into half of the red swan, and sealed the other half over them. “Do you even know what those will do, darling?” she asked, squeezing her voice to drip out every last drop out doubt.

“More or less,” Severus said in his _I make no promises but we shall proceed in any case_ voice.

Since, when you pressed Severus to elaborate on that phrase in that tone, it translated into nearly-English as ‘to a degree of 95% certainty, I know exactly what this magic will do, which is to say: exactly what I told it to,’ Narcissa sighed again and opened her hands in an _if you’re sure._

As he recast his fifty-seven billion protective charms on the swan, Mastilov rolled up his blue cloth (which was perfectly clean again) and replaced it on the marble table with a great book bound in gold-chased burgundy leather, with pages of good, thin vellum (if she was any judge of parchment, which she was). He opened to a clean page for her, and gave her, to her surprise, a cuckoo-feather quill.  After a moment’s consultation, and a peek at what others had written before her, she wrote:

_On this, the 25 th of August in the year 1980CE, I, N— of the House of B—, do attest as follows. That I have on this day visited this establishment named Dushata Stava Boyadisani and witnessed the enchantment of two blood-seeds. _

_That the first, intended for E— of the House of R—, was watered by S— of the blood of the House of P—: this done in my sight. That he gave of his blood full willingly before my eye, and that he is of the age of majority and that I know as fact that he need answer to no matriarch or patriarch. That he has given me the right and duty to be his witness._

_That the second, intended for S— of the blood of the House of P—, was watered by the blood of E— of the House of R—: this done before my eye. That I am his first cousin, the child of his mother’s house and the heir to the line of my mothers. That as the heir to his mother’s line I may speak for his interests, and have and do give my consent to this use of his blood, so the seed be used solely by and for the aforewritten S—._

_That I hold our names close because the alliances of my family are the business of my family and none other, and for no reason else._

_So I have written, so I believe, and so I swear on my blood and by my wand._

She cast the same spell Severus had to ‘water’ the ember—but she, glaring at him, cast it on her _thumb_. Only a single drop of blood fell onto the parchment to sign her statement. Most of Mastilov’s other patrons had signed their names in ink, some in long lists of names, but her flip through the pages had shown a few statements signed only in blood.

Unabashed, Severus took the quill and wrote,

_On this, the 25 th of August, 1980, I, the abovementioned S, swear my agreement with the statement of N of the house B as written on this page. I attest that she is indeed the first cousin of E of the house of R, and the heir of her mother’s line, and that I have asked her of my own will to be witness to all these things. I further attest that I have watered the seed intended for E of my own will, and intend that none other should have it, and will allow no other to have it while I can lift my wand. Nor is it my intention that any other but myself be seeded with what his blood has watered, and I will allow no other to have it without his consent while I can lift my wand. I finally attest that neither seed shall be planted without the concurrent mutual assent of all individuals named on this page. So I have written, so I believe, and so I swear on my blood and by my wand._

Without any acknowledgement that he had previously abused the spell in a way that Evvie was going to _hate_ when he heard about it, he also restricted himself, this time, to a sane and sensible single drop from the center of his palm.

When Severus had paid, they all had to have a cup of celebratory smoky tea, which Mastilov had forced them to wash down with a long series of toasts. Narcissa and Severus had both surreptitiously switched the appalling fruit brandy out for the slightly less appalling tea, which Narcissa still suspected of being able to hold its shape without a cup. Then Severus _finally_ let her gather up her own papers, picked up the woven basket of flowers, and led her out.

She gratefully breathed in the grassy, sunlit air outside, and turned to level a deeply accusatory glance up at him.

“Yes, I did really need to,” he replied imperturbably.

“You had better be _sure_ I’ll like this surprise of yours,” she charged him.

“We think you will. Once, as I said, you’ve got over murdering me.”

Crossly, she demanded, “Where _is_ Evvie, anyway?”

“Fetching everyone else.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, everyone else?”

He gave her his sweetest look, which wasn’t very. “Well, we thought we’d have a bit of a picnic, and once I volunteered to keep you occupied while it was being set up, he decided he’d better fetch everyone easier.”

Despite knowing that she shouldn’t, when he had that particular glint, she waited for it. She did, after all, have her wand.

Despite knowing that she had her wand, he let his face slide into one of his rare and demented hyena-grins, this one powered by extra anticipatory glee and what looked like a whole windmill of nerves, and concluded, “Like Evans.”

Forgetting everything, like her age and both her given and married surnames, she grabbed the lightweight, leafy basket and started beating him around the head with it. It had been that sort of a day. She didn’t even pay attention to the dizzying, unsettling twist of side-along apparition when it happened to her, because Severus just needed so very badly to have his obituary say his head had been bashed in with a flower-basket by a girl half his size.

* * *

[1] If this was not the real reason that pureblooded girls learned young to hold themselves still as lurking cats, it was in many cases the one that taught them that they wanted to. Hairpins could be spelled into place, of course, and were, but static electricity was _murder_ on little charms that didn’t require house-elf fingers in one’s hair to get them out at the end of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : The Mikado is wonderful, and is primarily a comment on British cultures, but was also written during the strength of the British enthusiasm for 'exotic' cultures. Since his fifth-year encounter at the Beech-tree left him with more comfortable with personal slurs than demographic ones (at least something came out of it!), Severus above chose to use the Bowdlerized version of the quotation.
> 
>  **Flower Language** :  
> Acacia: Depending on color, friendship, elegance, and secret love
> 
> Begonias: a complicated flower. Meanings can include caution, passion, individuality, creativity, good communication, and being plagued by negative thoughts that distract from good things.
> 
> Chestnut tree: do me justice
> 
> Columbine, purple: resolved to win
> 
> Elderflower: all sorts of magical associations, mainly defensive, but in flower language means compassion.
> 
> Fern: depending on the species, sincerity or discretion and secret love. Also, fascination and magic.
> 
> Grass: submission, utility
> 
> Jasmine: attachment, joy, grace and elegance, sensuality
> 
> Juniper: succor, protection
> 
> Lemon verbena: Enchantment, sensibility
> 
> Lotus leaf: recantation
> 
> Lotus flower: eloquence
> 
> Russian sage: if counted as a mint, virtue. As salvia/sage, long life, esteem, health
> 
> Thistle: another complicated one. Can mean bravery, devotion, durability, strength and determination, pain, nobility, pride...
> 
> Violets, blue: love and fidelity
> 
> Violets, white: innocence and candor
> 
> Walnut: intellect
> 
> Willow: depending on the type, can mean mourning, to be forsaken, frankness and freedom, or bravery and humanity.


	25. Headmaster's Office and Onwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trouble with Gryffindors is that, when offered Mysterious Adventure and are charged with the safety of other people's children, they sometimes forget to prepare sensibly, and the diaper bag gets left home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Nonconsensual spellcasting, including on infants. Houseism.
> 
>  **Temporary Notes** : Nobody's won yet... the same spell gets cast in this chapter, so I'll keep it going. I hope everyone had a warm and peaceful holiday, and let's all cross our fingers for 2017!
> 
>  **Postage Notes** : So... we're approaching the end of Act II, with about five chapters left including this one. I've just sent its last chapter to my beta. I haven't discussed my writing process a lot, but this is actually a really uncomfortably small posting margin for me, especially as the chapters have gotten longer which is part of why the time between posts has also gotten longer.
> 
> I am in no way going to stop writing this story, but I really need to take away the pressure of posting for a while so I can do the research and planning that the next part deserves (and also do some RL decision-making and juggling). The good news here is that allowing myself this means I can go back to a regular posting schedule for the rest of Act II. The other side of that coin is that it could potentially take some time before Act III starts, because the whole point here would be to get entirely away from deadlines until I was back to a buffer that made me comfortable. (When I started posting I had, like, forty chapters already written. Five does not feel good!)
> 
> I feel guilty about this and about having long breaks in between the next couple chapters in particular, so anyone who wants to tell me they think a one week or two week schedule is better should feel free to weigh in. Should votes happen, I will count them.

The line of little men dancing across the paper, with its attendant portkey, was more of a relief than Lily had expected. And not just because, when she got out her old copy of _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ and decoded it, it read ‘Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.” Really, it had just been that the waiting for something unknown was getting to her, on top of everything else.

And that there’d been even more ‘everything else’ than she’d expected. She _had_ expected to get woken up by a crying baby at intervals of what felt like every ten minutes, and to have the time she was awake endlessly occupied by the mess of diapers, drool, baby oil, burp goo, and bath drippings. She’d expected at least some of the constant soreness, although she hadn’t realized that she’d have to stop wearing earrings or choose between coiling her hair around her head all the time and chopping it off.

At least Jamie had been helpful there. Or, rather, his mum had. Dorea had come through with a charm she called the Slip Knot, which stopped Harry from being able to get a grip on Lily’s hair, and even stopped her hair getting sticky when he tried. It also meant she couldn’t do anything with it but let it hang loose, but she didn’t mind that and Jamie loved it, so that was all right.

She’d expected at least some of all those things, but she hadn’t really been _prepared_ for them. It was good to have Alice and Ravi to complain about it all with, but they had sane husbands who had sane friends. They didn’t understand why it was impossible for her to kick said friends out when they were firmly ensconced in her living room, teasing Pete about his imaginary girlfriend and preventing her from taking a nap. Or why it was impossible for her to go upstairs and leave them to it. They didn’t understand why she couldn’t use Sirius as a babysitter when he was so good with Harry and _could not be pried away from him with a crowbar_.

And Sirius was good with the baby under strict supervision, Lily would be the first to say. They were _adorable,_ and she had half a photo album already. It was just that she didn’t trust a Sirius left in charge not to suddenly decide it would be a marvelous and perfectly reasonable idea to transfigure a bitty helmet and biker jacket for Harry and take him flying off to Hogsmeade to play with the Giant Squid.

Which, actually, she wouldn’t have a problem with as long as Sirius didn’t take Harry _by himself,_ and _left a note and portkey._ Which he wouldn’t. So _she_ couldn’t. And she felt horrible about asking Remus. She knew he’d never let her pay him for it, but unlike Sirius, he really needed to be paid for time he spent on other people. And Peter just didn’t _have_ the time. He wasn’t much with babies anyway.

More responsible than the others, but he didn’t _want_ to like they did, and Lily didn’t want to leave Harry alone at this age with someone who thought he was a chore. He was a perfect little weathervane about things like that. Lily had read about all sorts of mums and pet-owners who thought their darlings were good judges of character. After growing up with Sev and Tuney, though, she thought it was more likely that simple, undeveloped minds could detect who felt good about _them._

She was frankly ecstatic, knowing that Sev and Jamie would both completely disagree with her about that for completely different reasons _and she could have it out with both_ _of them!_ In the meantime, though, she wasn’t asking a Harry-favor of a friend who didn’t firmly feel that, in letting him play with the baby, she’d be doing him one.

Which left her unable to be really alone when she wanted to work. She’d thought that once Jamie stopped _hovering_ —or, rather, had someone littler to hover over—she’d have time to build up a portfolio. But while James had work to do, he didn’t have an office to do it at.

More, there was still this awful sense of a fight hanging in the air. Not a play-fight for the joy of it, or a random-topic joust to get out of changing diapers: one neither of them knew how to start or finish. It almost felt like fifth year had been with Sev, when they’d both run out of arguments and knew neither of them would or could budge. When agreeing to disagree hadn’t been enough anymore, had stopped being possible. When she’d known a choice was coming, Only, there wasn’t any choice to make now, just this looming oppression. They’d already found out that agreeing to disagree didn’t work very well, not better than the fighting, and polite fictions didn’t work at all, in the long run, and what was left?

This was a flaw in her husband, but he was brave and kind and funny and strong and loyal and loving and he always meant well. Even when he was a bit dim and moderately misguided and several metric tons of stubborn, it was because he fundamentally wanted good things and was actively striking out for them in the best way that occurred to his helmet-headed man-brain at the time. Being cruel to people he’d decided were Bad Hats was the worst of him, and even that was because wanting the best for the world, because he believed in justice and hadn’t thought hard enough yet about what it was _for._ And it wasn’t the whole of him.

Not like spite and small-mindedness and insecurities had taken Tuney over and away from her, like she’d thought that more grandiose, more dangerous form of them taken Sev. She was hardly going to _leave_ Jamie over it, especially not with Harry to think about. She’d seen first-hand how crippling and painful it could be for a boy not to have a father who could look after him properly, who adored him; she’d never take that away from her baby just because of a fight they were having about how to deal with another grown-up who could more than look after himself and was thoroughly porcupine-proud about doing so, thankyousoverymuch.

Besides, she realized with amusement, Sev would probably be annoyed with her just for removing what ability she had to keep an eye on James, never mind what he’d have to say about subjecting a little boy to the strains of a separated household out of mere moral wibblishness.

Only, she couldn’t think what _else_ to do. Doing nothing was driving her mad, but it felt too important to approach carelessly or badly, even if she could have worked out how to start.

It was probably because of this unspoken strain that Jamie was able to peel himself away from counting Harry’s toes fifty times a day at all to remember she existed and write absolutely the _worst_ poetry to shout at her in an exhilarated manner whether or not they were alone. As it was, there was just so much needy, cuddly, attention-grabbing from both her boys that the idea of ever getting anything done had become laughable. It was very sweet for how loud it generally was, and she wouldn’t have traded it for anything but having the fight comfortably settled and over with, but really they were both very distracting.

She wasn’t sure how well her portfolio-building would have gone anyway, though. Maybe it was bleedover from the fight she wasn’t having with James, but for almost the first time in her life, she just couldn’t figure out what she wanted to _say._

Which was Sev’s fault. Because she did know what she wanted to say, actually, which was that police, whatever they were called, were supposed to be there to protect people. Not to harass them for no good reason. It was just that every time she picked up her quill, she could hear him sardonically thanking her for deigning to acknowledge that there was no good reason.

Thereby serving to remind her that there was one. She _knew_ there was one. There _were_ dangerous people out there, preying on the helpless, voiceless outskirts of wizarding society. She _knew_ the Aurors were only harassing everyone who caught their collective eye for lack of any better ideas about how to work out who was doing it. She wasn’t under public pressure to Do Something about her insoluble problem, but they were. And she didn’t have any better ideas about theirs than they did, or than she did about her own. So what _could_ she say?

If she’d had access to a safe and sane babysitter, she could have at least gone out and done a restaurant review or something. If she’d had access to a _reliable_ one, one she could have left Harry with all day, she could have gone to a Wizengamot session and done a write-up. She’d have been good at that, after watching Dad in court so many times, and it would have been nice to go over it with him. But since neither Alice nor Ravi had offered, she had to think they felt as overwhelmed as she did and any readier to host play-dates than she was.

So when Severus’s code came, it was an enormous relief to have something else to think about. She told James she was going to take Harry for a quick check-in with the midwives, who were still at Hogwarts, and promised she’d tell Dumbledore if she decided to take Harry for a walk after or something.

And then she did exactly that. To her pleasure and further relief, Dumbledore was actually expecting her! Her old Headmaster met her with a beaming smile under a hat that made her think of gooseberry fool, and clasped her hand warmly. “Ah, the lovely Mrs. Potter! And little Harry!”

Harry stared at Dumbledore. Lily didn’t blame him; she’d stared the first time she’d seen a beard that could have swallowed a pumpkin, too. Dumbledore’s was better-kempt than Hagrid’s, but then again, it was considerably shinier.

Then Harry’s gaze veered off to look at possibly a bird, so maybe Lily was reading too much in again.

Dumbledore patted him like a man who quite liked babies in theory but had never gotten to know one in person or got over feeling awkward around them. Harry, who was used to being boisterously manhandled, gave him a sort of _what are you and how am I meant to interpret being cautiously batted at, Mummy, I think this might be a strange person_ look, which was so Sev-like on her baby’s little squishy face with Jamie’s bold, quirky eyebrows exaggerating it that Lily had to work very hard not to burst out laughing in front of the old man.

Oblivious, Dumbledore smiled, “I’m so glad you felt able to answer Severus’s invitation, Lily. It does my heart good to see you getting along again, I must say.”

She blinked, and re-adjusted her grip on Harry. “Well, he said it’d be important if he called. Er, it will be safe to bring the baby, will it? He said it would be safe, but he meant for me. I suppose I _could_ have left Harry with James, but I’m afraid I might come home to find him transfigured into a bunny rabbit.”

Dumbledore chuckled as though that had been a joke, and reached out to stroke Harry’s head. He got yawned at, comfortably, and smiled down. “Quite safe, Lily, quite safe. I’m afraid, however, that I must impose upon you.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“You see, I’m not attending, myself, so I find myself in the unenviable position of asking a young lady to play owl for me. Would you be so good as to deliver a package to Severus?”

“Oh, that’s no problem, Professor,” she assured him. “As long as I don’t need hands free to carry it…”

“No, no, I have it shrunken and prepared for you,” he assured her. “Make sure to tell him not to unshrink it until it is where it ought to stay, if you would.”

“Of course, sir.”

He passed her a what felt like a wooden box, wrapped in brown paper. “And one more thing, Lily. One of our newly-appointed prefects has also been invited to the meeting—young Miss Blakeney. May I name you her chaperone for the afternoon? Severus is quite correct that it should all be perfectly safe, but I believe Mrs. Blakeney’s mind would be more at ease if she were assured that a Hogwarts alumna in whom I had perfect confidence was looking after her daughter.”

Lily hesitated, torn between the half of her that badly needed to ask what house Blakeney was in and the half that was ashamed to let that to be her first question. Even if the girl was as bad as Mulciber about muggleborns and, presumably, their children, she’d know Dumbledore expected Lily back. And Sev would be there—soon, with any luck. It was _safe_ to remember more strongly that they weren’t all like that than that some were.

“You need not be concerned that Miss Blakeney will be a trial,” Dumbledore rescued her. “She’s a very kind and well-behaved young lady, although I would not suggest injuring yourself while in her presence. Her Head of House informs me that she can’t decide whether her crowning ambition is to run St. Mungo’s or cure the common cold.”

“Er—” Lily began.

“Pepperup,” Dumbledore forestalled her with the weary air of someone who’d had this conversation at least eighty times before from both ends of it, probably at least once with Sev from the wrong end, “is, as I’m sure you’re well aware, not precisely a cure.”

“…Right,” she decided to have no further part in whoever was being crazy about whatever now. “Sure, Professor, I’ll take her, but can’t you tell me what it’s about?”

“Oh, no,” he smiled, twinkling away like anything. “I’m sure I haven’t the least idea.”

The girl who stepped out of Dumbledore’s floo, an older woman’s voice calling sternly after her to remember that ‘no descendant of Margaret and the Pimple had ever shown a hint of stage fright yet,’ (whatever that meant) did seem to be quite nice. Since it was August and she wasn’t in her school robes yet, unfortunately, Lily still wasn’t having any luck working out what House she was in. She would have put her money on Hufflepuff, except that Sev was involved. Blakeney’s quietness could have meant anything, but it looked to Lily like actual shyness.

Between that and wanting to be a doctor, Lily was inclined to think Ravenclaw. She supposed Slughorn _might_ have gotten Sev to tutor a much younger Ravenclaw who was especially gifted at potions, if Sev had _really_ annoyed him or asked for something really huge. And the girl being there might not have much to do with Sev after all. Sev might have just been the one to ask her because Dumbledore had told him to, she supposed. Testing how well they were getting on. Maybe if she’d said no to him, Dumbledore would have asked her himself.

What Dumbledore asked Blakeney was whether she was excited for the challenges of the coming term. He used the word ‘excited,’ but the sympathetic twinkle in his eye meant that Lily wasn’t too surprised when the girl gave a contained sort of squirm and confessed, “I was a bit nervous, Professor, but then I got an owl from La—erm, one of our old prefects, and now I feel better.”

“Your friend gave you good advice?” Dumbledore asked kindly.

The girl blinked grey eyes that were softer and darker and more really _grey_ than Lily was used to seeing lately. Usually she saw grey eyes that seemed improbably silvery to her, or that seemed to change colors in a way that was _just_ a bit purer and more intense than the way hazel muggle eyes changed in different kinds of light, _just_ enough to catch her muggle-raised attention.

Sometimes it unnerved her a little, even though her own eyes might have been (if she was honest with herself enough to admit that Tuney might, in a yes-okay-Sev-petty and maybe even twisted sort of way, be right), a bit more of a cat-in-the-dark color than green-eyed humans were supposed—than green-eyed humans usually were. She didn’t think they were more green than the Tartan’s, although Professor Slughorn’s were a more normal unripe-gooseberry shade, the sort of opaque color that Sev had said, when forced to read magazines he had no natural interest in, was only called green in politeness.

Lily supposed you might say the same about Blakeney’s eyes. They weren’t a by-default-color, exactly, more a color one couldn’t quite name. Like Sev’s, although in his case it was more a case of being a color one couldn’t quite _believe._ Sev’s were such a dark brown she’d never been a hundred percent sure they _weren’t_ a genuine, authentic, color-wheel black, however odd that would have been outside of Asia. Sometimes she’d caught herself thinking they might be blue under those stupid lashes when he got really angry or the light caught him a certain way.

Blakeneys’ were a bit like that, where it was hard to say what the color was. Where you couldn’t tell with Sev because he rarely opened his eyes all the way and the color was so shiny it was actually quite hard to see color past any contrasting glint of light in them, though, with Blakeney it was a fuzzy distinction. Pressed hard to name the color, Lily would have said dark, soft dust in a dim room, or really bad city evening smoke.

Unlike Lily’s, though, Blakeney’s eyes wouldn’t have made a muggle blink, except maybe in admiration in a few years. And while her hair was done in a feathery style that made it rather pretty, Lily knew the color was what Petunia would have called _mousey._ It was a horrid word for a girl who was pretty in an unassuming sort of way, whose face would have made a person think ‘heart-shaped’ if her hair had been really any other color. But that particular shade… the only other word for it was ‘dun,’ which was scarcely better.

“—Gave me good news,” the girl was saying, in a polite _I am sorry to have to correct my elders_ sort of voice. It wasn’t exactly timid, not the voice of someone who was nervous, but it did very much pull Lily’s mind back to Tuney’s voice in her head saying, with a little sniff that was somewhere between scorn and satisfaction, _mousey._

“No doubt you’ll be glad of the chance to express your appreciation before the school year begins,” Dumbledore suggested.

Lily felt rather sorry for him. The words were stuffy, but he wasn’t being ponderous or anything. Lily thought he looked like he was trying to be kind to someone he suspected he couldn’t begin to understand. It was the look of someone trying hard with someone they had no idea how to talk to. She’d never seen him like that, never.

Admittedly, she hadn’t watched him try to have one-on-one conversations with a lot of students who weren’t either chattering enthusiastically back at him, or… well, Sev. But Sev being either hard and cold or bitterly snarly didn’t seem to throw Dumbledore like this quiet little girl who smiled politely at him—a smile that was just a bit confused, and seemed to wonder why he had gone over all awkward when she was just standing there—and dutifully agreed, “Yes, sir, very glad.”

Dumbledore smiled a grandfatherly smile that was 100% pure resigned sigh, if Lily was any judge, and gave Lily a _there you have it_ sort of shrug before introducing them.

“I remember Miss Evans, Professor,” Blakeney—Peregrine—told him. It wasn’t that she went pointed, exactly, but there was a solidity, maybe a weight to her voice that hadn’t been in it before. “But I’m sure you wouldn’t know me, Miss.”

“I’m afraid not,” Lily told her. “I expect you’ve grown a lot since I would have recognized you, anyway.” She smiled and held out her hand. “It’s Mrs. Potter now, but you can call me Lily.”

Blakeney hesitated a moment, and then, to Lily’s amusement, gave her what she might have called a Remus-shake: firm, but only for a moment, and then the little hand quickly slipped away. “Everyone calls me Cleo,” she offered.

“Because you look like Cleopatra?” Lily offered back with a smile.

Blakeney blinked again, and her face settled into a bemused look that said Lily could have looked a long time for a sweeter (and, just possibly, funnier) way to be more completely wrong and never found one. “Coins of her have more nose than I do, Miss.”

“Oh, coins,” Lily said weakly, and asked Dumbledore, “Am I thinking of Theda Bara or Elizabeth Taylor?”

“I’m sure the answer would mean more from your mutual friend,” Dumbledore said gracefully. If he hadn’t been so old, Lily would have called it an _I am not touching this one with a fifty-foot barge-pole, why didn’t I think to have a woman my own age in this room with me_ face. “Who, I’m sure, is awaiting your arrival impatiently.”

They let themselves be courteously ushered the two or three steps back to his fireplace. When he lit it, Lily clutched Harry, who must have dozed off at one point, and exclaimed in alarm, “Professor, what’s wrong with your floo powder?”

“My dear Lily, there’s no need for concern,” Dumbledore assured her soothingly, with a rather more human twinkle. It was laughing at her a bit, but only as between friends. That was all right, as long as he was _sure_ it was safe for the baby. “This is an international floo call, and as it must pass through national border-wards, the formula and, naturally, the color of flame it produces—”

“HALLLOOOOA OUT THERE,” someone who was definitely not Sev, but was definitely male and familiar, called out through the flames. “If you keep this open much longer, the innkeeper’s going to charge for the extra powder. Which I wouldn’t mind except that someone’s bound to tell my highly-strung bronze-niffler, and then I’ll _really_ be in trouble.”

 _“Lance!”_ Blakeney squealed happily, and jumped into the fire before Lily could even register the difference excitement made in her.

Lily looked at Dumbledore, who was gazing after the girl, bemused. “Such impetuosity,” he remarked, smiling. “A precious thing in these troubling times, especially where one wouldn’t think to find it. I’m glad she’ll have you looking after her, my dear Lily.”

Through her own sigh (Sev might have had a point back at school; the man could be _completely_ unfair), Lily thought she heard a gagging sort of noise from the other end of the fire, and the man’s voice saying something in a tone that was failing miserably to reprimand instead of chuckle. “You’re _sure_ it’s safe for the baby, Professor?” she asked sharply.

“I’m fine over here, Miss,” Blakeney called through, her voice nearly sedate again.

“If inconvenient,” the man called gaily, “come all the same.”

She blinked at first, but that couldn’t have been anything but a reassurance. “Oh, all _right,_ ” she acquiesced crossly, and fixed her old Headmaster with a stern look. “You know where that is? If I scream,” she whispered, readjusting the sleeping baby for a firmer grip, “you’ll come through?”

He smiled reassuringly, and swiftly wrote in the air with his wand, _If you don’t say Tickle The Dragon._ “At once,” he assured her aloud.

She sighed again, covered Harry’s eyes in case he opened them in the middle of the sparks and spinning confusion, and stepped through.

The room on the other side was, as the man had suggested, clearly the common room of an inn, and the man was Rosier, whatever Blakeney had called him. He had an arm around the girl’s shoulder, and was looking as if a less amiable person would have been annoyed. “I should make _you_ pay for the extra floo powder, Evans, as a fee for dithering.”

“Well, I can tell someone’s been rubbing off on you,” she replied drolly, and then wished she hadn’t. Turning hastily to the fire, she called, “Tickle the dragon!”

“Have a wonderful afternoon, children,” Dumbledore called fondly through, “and go with my best of wishes.” The flames brightened from their spectral green to a cheerful and homely orange, which was a good deal brighter.

“Oh, I’m _sure_ Sev called me out mysteriously after three weeks’ warning in order to give me a wonderful afternoon,” she grumbled. “That’s exactly like him.”

Roseir’s mouth quirked. Making a floatily expressive gesture with twiddly fingers, he drawled, “Shouldn’t you trust such a _sage_ old _elder_ _statesman_ of your… your who’s-it-what?”

She scowled at him, and pointed out, “I _came._ ”

“And you’re _all over ash_ ,” he shook his head, coming up to unhook a clothes-brush from the side of the fireplace and hand it to her. “I’ll take the sprog while you tidy up, if you like?”

“There isn’t _that_ much,” she protested, but handed Harry over without too much reluctance.

“That’s what you think,” Rosier—Evan retorted with a sleepily amused smile. “The floo’s flue’s backed up something awful. It’ll be all down your back, you watch.”

She craned around behind her and exclaimed in annoyance. She hadn’t worn anything extra-fancy, since Sev’s note hadn’t told her what to be prepared for. It was just a denim skirt and peasant blouse—practical for almost anything in this weather, including the cleaning-the-bathroom she’d been doing to avoid her writing desk, though quite a contrast to the long robes and frocks the four or five other people in the inn were wearing, mostly black and all looking grubby with wear rather than grime, like Sev’s had at school. Only, there was some quite nice embroidery around the collar of the blouse, and she’d thrown on a fringed waistcoat Sirius had left in the closet, because it had pockets and a loop onto which she should attach her strappy red wand-sheath.

And the waistcoat was suede, and she didn’t know any cleaning spells for suede. He was going to be _horrible_ about it.

Only it turned out that _Evan_ knew cleaning spells for suede. “Severus doesn’t like having elves tidying up,” he explained long-sufferingly when she couldn’t help showing her surprise. “He’d do everything himself if I let him— _you_ know.”

She nodded, rolling her eyes. She knew, all right.

“But he’s utter rubbish at laundry and furniture and all that,” he shook his head again. He’d bound his hair back more or less like your average pureblood wizard, except that most of them would have used Sleek-eezy. She might have supposed he’d let it go for his vacation, except that he always let it wave all over the place. In her experience, men picked a five-minute morning grooming routine and stuck with it, except for Sirius and when they decided to grow lamentable facial hair. “I mean, they’re clean when he’s done with them, but you don’t entirely feel you’ve got the upholstery you started with.”

“Oh, I know what you mean!” she exclaimed, grinning. There’d never been anyone it was remotely safe to gossip to about Severus like she would any other friend, except her mum. And Mum had always started frowning and looking worried, and then come back later from Sev’s house fuming about that ungrateful Mrs. Snape’s nasty vinegar tongue. “He used to try to do the laundry with _rocks._ ”

Evan and Blakeney did exactly the same sort of pause, where their eyes flicked to meet and then slid quizzically and dubiously to Lily.

“He’d lay it out on a rock and just rub the soap over it,” she elaborated. “Sometimes he’d thrash it with a tree branch. To loosen the dirt, he said, although I’d have thought it’d pack it in harder, myself. He said that was how the Founders probably did it.”

The pause lingered, and then Blakeney asked, “Didn’t the Founders have wands?”

“Definitely wands, almost certainly servants, and most likely house elves,” Evan replied. “This is what we call ‘a misguided effort to convince oneself that one’s History homework contains buried nuggets of practical interest.’”

Blakeney looked at him.

“Buried nuggets of interesting practice?”

“Maybe he just felt like hitting something,” she decided.

“It was easier on the clothes than the rune-magic he tried before he decided soap counted as a potion,” Lily informed them. What it had been was an attempt to save face about not even having an electric wringer, let alone a washing machine, and ashamed of being afraid of what the washing board could do to his hands, and not being able to afford soap that wouldn’t _also_ ruin his hands. She wouldn’t have said so, though, even if she hadn’t suspected Evan knew it.

“Oh, the one that turns thread into wool except for eating cotton instead if you use it at the new moon?” Evan asked, with the wince of experience.

“That and the one that made them stand up like someone was wearing them and go down to the pump and wash themselves until they had holes in,” she agreed while Blakeney hid a silent giggly face behind her hands.

“I never heard about that one,” Evan said with an odd expression. “Wouldn’t have thought he’d try out something like that during the summer.”

Which, Lily thought, meant that his odd expression meant he’d wanted to say _in front of the muggles._ It had been Sunday during church hours and reasonably safe, but she couldn’t blame Evan for thinking that one proved Sev insane.

Except, “It wasn’t supposed to do anything like that,” she explained, and tried flashing Blakeney a mischievous look. “I learned a lot of new words that day.”

“Well, let’s see what new things we can learn today,” Evan said cheerfully, sliding away from the counter he’d been leaning on with an air of standing up. “Drink before we’re off, Ev—Lily? They don’t have pumpkin juice,” he apologized to Blakeney, “but Spike’s going to be very unpleasant when his radish juice supply is cut off, I think, and there’s always elderflower cordial.”

“I’ll try the radish,” the girl said bravely. Lily got the distinct impression she would have gone for the cordial if Evan hadn’t said that bit about Sev.

“I’d like to try that, too,” Lily smiled.

“Nope,” Evan said blithely, and walked over to where the barkeep was washing a glass by hand and pretending not to stare at them. Carefully, he said, “Edna rappasock—”

“Repichka sok,” the man corrected him, as though he felt he ought to be used to Evan murdering his language but wasn’t yet.

“Right, that,” Evan nodded. “And edna smoky nova, and edna dull lever.”

“Dyuleva?” the man asked skeptically.

“You know what I mean,” Evan said, looking nearly vexed enough to make Lily blink. “A quince and a fig rakia.” When he came back, he grumbled, “Spike says everyone appreciates it if you make the effort and don’t rely on translation charms, but I think he’s having me on.”

Lily smiled at him, not unsympathetically, and dropped her hard-earned Hogwarts accent entirely. “Maybe he’s just got better at accents than you,” she suggested in pure mile-a-minute Liverpudlian.

“Oh, not you, too,” Evan moaned, and made as if to toss back his drink before reconsidering it. He stopped himself, though, took a breath, cleared his expression, and drank the yellow stuff like a wine taster, as if he had a duty to appreciate it to its fullest.

It did seem to make him happy, in a gentle sort of way. Lily tried hers, too, and decided she must have been given the fig stuff. It tasted sticky-sweetly heavy enough to be fig, but she thought she’d wait until she was out of the server’s eye before summoning herself some water. Blakeney looked even less pleased with the radish juice, but she didn’t so much look disgusted as like someone who was fondly saying to herself _of COURSE Sev likes this, the idiot._

Evan’s mouth twitched a little at Blakeney’s expression, too, and he held out his arm for her with a kind-rescuer look. “Shall we, then, ladies, onward?”

“I don’t even know where we are,” Lily complained, pulling Harry a little farther up her shoulder. Siri must have _really_ exhausted him this morning for him to have slept through the floo, poor pet. It wasn’t too very surprising, though. She was afraid Tigger might never recover. And she’d be lording the fact that none of _them_ had thought to put a sticking charm on the doggy-saddle over all the boys forever.

Including Remus. She was completely sure that he’d thought of it and would have spoken up if she hadn’t, but since he’d let her James-and-Siriuswrangle all by himself, he could take the consequences.

“It doesn’t matter where we are now,” Evan said, offering her his other elbow. “It matters where we’re go—er?”

One of the local women, grooves cut disapprovingly into her face, had eased herself up and hobbled over to them on a stick. She looked Lily up and down, and barked something in what might have been Russian.

Evan looked helpless, and told Lily, “Mrs. Groenwald wants to know if you intend to wander about where no one knows you without both hands to defend your baby.”

“It was longer than that,” Lily noted, a little suspiciously.

His helpless look turned hapless, and he admitted, “She also called me useless and said Cleo looked made out of milk.”

Blakeney, some growing part of Lily was less than surprised to see, looked secretly pleased.

Speaking directly to the woman, Lily said, “I didn’t mean to, only I didn’t know I was coming.”

Evan told the woman, “She says she was ambushed by the invitation and must do her best.”

The woman made a _ptah_ noise, and tapped a napkin with her wand. It jumped up and grew into a strangely shaped garment which wriggled down over Lily’s head. When she examined it, she found it had a perfectly Harry-sized pocket. With an exclamation of delight, she availed herself of it, even though being mum-handled about made Harry start to stir in his sleep.

She looked up to try to thank the woman, but her benefactress was already stumping away, muttering disgustedly to herself. Refusing to be dashed, Lily pulled out one of her own handkerchiefs and transfigured it into the most beautiful silk flower arrangement that meant gratitude that she could come up with on the spur of the moment.

“Peach blossoms and hydrangeas?” Blakeney asked hesitantly.

“Don’t sound so unsure around Spike or he’ll have you revising your herbology till the end of time,” Evan advised drolly. “Very pretty, Lily. Someone will see she gets it, won’t they?”

One or two of the locals grunted without looking up.

With _what am I doing here_ eyebrows, Evan smiled that helpless smile again and ushered them out. She barely had a chance to take in rustic roofs and muddy cobblestones before he’d apparated them all away.

It was only Lily who exclaimed out loud (again. Sev would have been giving her one of his _you’re embarrassing yourself_ expressions by now), but Blakeney’s eyes widened in pleasure, too.

They were standing under a great roof of stone, but it wasn’t like being in a cave. There were enormous holes in that ceiling, worn smooth by time, with carpets of green, growing things dripping down towards the ground. And the ground itself had a stream running through it, with trees springing up from the sides, and more lush carpets of flowering, mossy beds where the sunshine fell under the great skylights.

Unlike Blakeney, Lily was only just able to be polite enough to wait long enough to hear Evan say, “Welcome to Devetashka Cave.”

Then she, too, had toed off her shoes and flown to one of those lush flowerbeds, irresistibly drawn by the gorgeous throbbing green against the grey rock of the cave wall, the hot summery scent of live flowers and growing plants mingling with the cool metallic-ozone smell of damp stone.

It wasn’t a combination she’d ever quite gotten before—the closest was probably sitting by the Black Lake during summer terms at Hogwarts, but that was all bound up with sweaty boys and the paper smells of her textbooks, and the fishy smells of the lake. This was pure and purely elemental, everything but fire.

Eventually, arms almost as full of flowers as they were of miraculously still-asleep baby, she grinned at Blakeney. She almost got an actual smile back. She would have called it a full-out grin if it had been Sev, and thought she might as well now, probably.

Looking up behind Lily, Blakeney turned a bit shamefaced. Lily twisted to see Evan, standing patiently with a benevolently amused look (the git) and a big, broad basket that looked woven out of some sort of bark. “Got all you need?” he asked, but not as if he was trying to prompt them to say yes.

“Oh, I suppose,” Lily agreed anyway, pushing herself up. There were all sorts of beautiful flowers left, but none of them was _calling_ to her in the same way, and it wouldn’t be right to denude the place just because she felt like bringing home a bouquet. Evan held out the basket, and she and Blakeney both dropped their greedily gathered treasures in.

Then Blakeney gasped, and lunged at an unpretentious little flower with five blazing scarlet petals coming into a dark ring before a pure white heart, with lolly-like stamens ending in pollen of a true gold. “Lance!” she breathed, holding it up.

When Evan smiled, something relaxed and warmed in his face, making Lily realize for the first time how tense his shoulders had been all the time. “Of course you can bring your House with you. Give it here, Cleo."  He drew something onto the single sprig with his wand, and it grew into a thickly-blooming coronet. He settled it onto her hair as if you placed fire onto ashes.

“Do I get one?” Lily smiled.

He tilted his head at her, with an expression she couldn’t quite pin down, somewhere between friendliness, curiosity, and calculation. _Just_ like a Slytherin. “Do you?”

She’d thought the flowerbed was done calling to her, but she looked down again anyway. To her surprise, except for one sad, droopy little white flower with three petals like deflated balloons, all the flowers were _gone!_  “I suppose not,” she blinked.

Evan smiled, irritatingly mysterious. “Pluck me your snowdrop, Lily. What’s better to wear than hope, when you don’t know what you’re walking into?”

“What _are_ we walking into?” she demanded, but he just held out his hand. She sighed, and gave in.

What they were walking into, it turned out, was one of the great pools of light under one of the great glassless windows into the sky. And also, apparently, a wizardspace area, or at least a plot of ground under some sort of ward or secrecy charm: the moment Lily stepped into the sun, she saw all sorts of strange things she would have sworn hadn’t been in the cave with them, and they were no longer alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes** : Radishes were not intended to have any particular symbolism here; I considered them in the light of pumpkin juice, which is not a normal muggle product but is probably a less crazy thing than OJ for wizards to normalize when they've got lots of space to spread out and can create water but don't have either have a great orchard climate or great trade relationships with places that do. Radishes grow well in Europe and have plenty of C, and if you can get all that damn fiber out and don't demand your juice be sweet, why not?
> 
> (I have tried radish juice with a friend. One of us thought it would be amazing if we'd known to strain it, fresh and peppery and delicious. I was not that one.)
> 
> As for the significance of fig and quince, there's plenty on the web about that if you care to bother. :)
> 
>  **Process Snippets** : Beta: However did Lily get out of attending church? (or did she sneak off and catch hell later?)
> 
> Author: ...You know, I think it is entirely possible that Petunia flung out something spiteful about witches not being able to go into churches and Sev said Why, Absolutely, You Are So Smart, I Am Humbled And Amazed, Quite Right, My Friend Has NO CHOICE but to keep me company I mean keep me out of trouble or something instead of being bored by stupid muggles all day, and their parents were insufficiently truly-religious not to tell their friends that their angel of a daughter was giving sunday-school tutoring to that er-difficult Snape boy who kept getting kicked out for asking silly questions in an impertinent and snappish tone of voice and making dreadful faces at the minister, and of course they'd be sure to tell her all about the wonderful sermons when they got home,


	26. Devetashka Caves, Bulgaria (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People keep thinking they have kindly and adequately explained what's going on to the muggleborn. They are wrong. For example, no one's even _mentioned_ the 60-meter Maypole, and it's nearly September.
> 
> (And really, Severus, don't be so _paranoid_ , with all your scariest friends on your side how badly could it possibly go? It's not as if humiliating you is some sort of _scored spectator sport_ …)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Um. Hmm. Uh. Er... violence, harsh language, patronization, fantastic racism, really uncomfortable family dynamics, and vile Slytherin treachery.
> 
> But it's not what you think.
> 
> Ok, it's probably exactly what you think. Except for the 'exactly' part. Unless you were thinking about disaster, misunderstandings, screaming, insults, terror, nonconsensual body alteration, and just possibly tears. Which would have been intelligent of you. Because Severus.
> 
>  **Notes** : They're in a RL place. Google-image the name; it is _gorgeous_.
> 
> Also, the warnings may have to serve for the next post, too.

“Welcome, _mes enfants,_ ” smiled a woman’s voice.

Lily dragged her eyes down from the great pole of twined metals—copper or rose-gold and silver or platinum, she couldn’t be sure—that stretched from the edge of the large sand pit on the banks of the river to the mossy lip of the enormous hot blue sky-hole above them in the cavern’s roof.

Of the women standing on either side of the pole, the one who must have spoken was quite small, with hair too crystal-white for her round little face, wearing a simple set of formal dove-grey roves thickly hemmed in black. She had a merry look; it was the other who was really dove-like.

This second witch looked a bit older except for her hair, which, unlike Blakeney’s, was a true ash-blonde. She had on an anxious wanting-to-please-everyone look, which went very badly with her robes. They were of the same cut, with simple brown bands in place of the first witch’s black, but instead of the soft, pearly grey they were a burnt orange that flashed tawny and cream where the light hit. Where the white-haired witch had beamed invitingly at Lily and Blakeney, this one smiled anxiously, as if to say, _well, here we are together, let’s try our best._

“Hullo, Mrs. Prince,” Evan said from behind Lily’s shoulder, “and you must be Severus’s Madam Nell.”

“But yes!” the tiny witch smiled, holding out both hands to Evan. Her eyes—blue, and a lovely clear blue, but a blessedly _normal_ blue—sparkled mischievously as he stepped forward to take them. “I am of all things the most pleased to finally meet our adorable Severin’s _great_ friend. You will not mind that I call him this, I think? My name also is a great stone, you see, because it comes from Petronilla—little girl Peter, yes, the rock? My husband, he thinks it is so-amusing to have married a stone—such fate! he says. Of course, my father only wanted for me to be a good woman, so virtuous, so serious.”

She pulled a somber face, eyes dancing, and slyly confessed, “Alors! I will not say to you he was a terrible father to think he must instruct me, no, I cannot say this thing.” She shook her head sadly at Evan, resuming her conspiratorial smile. “But does our good friend need to be told he must be so plain and so fierce whenever he is spoken to? I am thinking that he knows this already, me!”

Evan smiled, still holding her hands, and drawled, “I don’t think he’s going to forget, but almost all of his friends do grasp around desperately for something else to call him. It’s an awfully hard name to feel friendly about, unless you’re naturally stuffy.”

He straightened, and bowed a little over their joined hands. Sounding, to Lily’s surprise, deadly serious, and not sleepy or even lazy at all, he said, “You’ve already helped him so much, and now you honor us beyond what I could ever have hoped.” Relaxing again, he told her with an amused look, “I mean, of course he’d have killed for the chance to apprentice with your good husband. But he does okay in that field on his own, I’d say.”

He let go, and turned to the woman called Mrs. Prince without bothering to explain his mysteriousness to Lily or Blakeney. With a much more polite and less enthusiastic smile, he said, “Mrs. Prince, how good of you to come.”

“I’m _so glad_ you invited me,” she said, not just earnestly but urgently. “It was clever of you boys to have Dumbledore ask me to tea, and so on. I’d never have thought of it.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to make him some lace for real, to keep your husband wondering what’s taking so long,” Evan said, not really apologizing.

She shrugged, smiling in a habitually-anxious way. “I’m sure he’ll really use it, too, knowing Albus. Since his hair went white he’s been playing up the Traditional Old Wizard look something dreadful. Well, I suppose… that _is_ about the same time he was promoted in the Wizengamot, so maybe he felt…”

“Quite,” Evan said, and Lily wasn’t at all sure whether he was cutting her off or rescuing her.

“There’s nothing I can _do_ about your inquiry,” she pressed at him, full-on anxious now.

He was looking the way Slytherins always thought they looked, as opposed to the way they usually did look to Gryffindors: not nasty or cruel or sneaky, but rather cool and remote. Not completely unapproachable, but giving the sense that you were a suppliant. That human feelings were the last thing that might move them to help you, whatever else might do it.

He didn’t usually. Lily hadn’t thought he could look like that, not that hard sort of distant. Apart from everything, yes, but not above everyone. He hadn’t even come at her that way when he was at his most exasperated with her about Severus, and she was just _itching_ to know what it was about!

His voice, though, wasn’t unkind, when he repeated, “Well, it’s good that you’re here. At least,” his gaze honed sharp, “we’re nearly trusting that it is.”

“No, I understand,” she said hastily. “I’ve already agreed.”

Evan nodded, and turned back to the French witch. He beckoned to Blakeney, and then sort of gently shoved her forward with his hands resting on her shoulders. “Madam Nell, there aren’t a lot of people I’d trust to look after Severus for as long as five minutes, and there aren’t a lot of kids Severus is happy trusting with power over other kids. This is Perry Blakeney, who we’ve called Cleo because ‘staff of Aesculapeus’ is too long for a nickname. Er, and because we thought we’d better do something preemptive before her classmates who think they’re funny thought of something else.”

Blakeney blushed, half in happy embarrassment and half in anticipatory mortification.

“But that is wonderful!” Madam Nell exclaimed, holding out her hands again. Blakeney took them, still blushing. “Usually they are harder names that such children as you are given, is it not so?”

“It’s not a weak name, ma’am,” Blakeney said, shy but solid. “It’s just not a mean one.”

“I knew Marguerite St. Just before she married your family, you know,” Madam Nell confided. Lily frowned; there was something a little familiar about that name, although she couldn’t place it. “She was a silly girl at a time when it was easy to do great harm in a moment of folly, and you would think now that she was not so great upon the stage as they say, for at that time, _enh._ The acting, it was not so natural. But even silly children can become wise and great, if they can learn from trouble, no?”

“What if they’re not allowed to learn from it?” Blakeney asked intently.

“What is your family’s answer?” she asked.

Blakeney’s eyes darted nervously. Finally, slowly, she said, “See to it they live under different teachers.”

“ _Alors_ ,” Evan said softly, with a rueful little smile, and Blakeney let slip not only a nod but a tiny grin that Lily thought might have been just a bit smug. Or, at least, so satisfied that it looked smug in contrast to how she’d been acting so far.

“My little Miss Cleo,” Madam Nell smiled, “do you know why you are here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Blakeney said, looking as if she would have liked to wriggle or bounce. She did let her eyes shine, but that was it.

Lily, who had by this point given up hope that Dumbledore had asked her to babysit a _Ravenclaw_ prefect, sighed to herself. Clearly she was the only one who didn’t know what they were all here for. She wondered whether her newly-recovered friendship would survive beating Sev around the head with Tuney’s etiquette book.

“I will change your robes until you leave, if it is agreeable?” Madam Nell asked. Permission given, she tapped the girl’s light, summery, nearly-a-real-frock of a robe with her wand.

It turned the same cut as the other two, in a fresh, bright spring green with pearl-white trim, and Blakeney laughed. “Naj will like that,” she told Evan.

“Naj will think it’s twelve times more symbolic than you do,” he informed her, and poked her pointy nose. She seemed to gather from the poke that she was supposed to go stand next to Madam Nell, on the other side from Madam Prince and the pole.

Summoned by Evan’s beckoning hand, Lily tightened her grip on Harry, although he was snoozing quite happily and quite securely in the sling-thing the woman in the inn or tavern or whatnot had made for her, and stepped closer.

“Madam Nell,” Evan said, markedly less enthusiastically than he’d introduced Blakeney but less like a carrot-topped marble statue than when he’d spoken to Mrs. Prince, “this is Lily Potter.” He looked at her, rather skeptically, and extremely lamely ended, “Er.”

She rolled her eyes as far as she could at him, and extended her hand to Madam Nell, saying firmly, “I’m Sev’s friend, and I’m here because Sev asked me to come. Other than that, I’ve no idea.”

Madam Nell’s eyes sparkled at her—almost like Dumbledore’s, except less sedate and more gleeful—and she’d just opened her mouth to reply when there was the CRACK of apparition, followed by a howling shriek of soprano fury and Sev, more than half laughing, protesting, “Ow, ow, ow, stoppit, _people!”_

Lily heard the female voice occasionally rising over his attempts to placate her, saying things like _Do not care!_ and _Never agreed!_ and _Utter harridan!_

“ _Who’s_ a harridan?” Evan asked with great interest and very loudly.

The woman rounded on him, snarling, _“AND AS FOR YOU, EVANDER ROSIER—”_

It took Lily until the woman had stopped, stared, taken in the scene, taken in a few calming breaths, returned to a less brick-red color, and re-arranged her hair to recognize Narcissa Black-as-was.

“I did say you’d probably like it once you got over wanting to murder us,” Sev said, so meekly Lily barely recognized _him._

Black turned calmly to look at him. Tentatively, hopefully, he held out what might have started out as more or less the same sort of basket Evan had made for Lily and Blakeney’s flowers, before she’d used it to assault him. It must have been charmed, because the flowers had stayed in it, and looked fine. Black smiled forgivingly, and moved to take it.

Before Lily could think to wonder why Sev had cringed into a braced position, the Slytherin witch had spun on her heel and, in a whirl of robes, kicked Sev squarely in the chest, plucking the basket neatly from his hand as he doubled over.

Lily and Mrs. Prince exclaimed—in outrage and distress, respectively—but Madam Nell just blinked quizzically, and Evan folded his arms in barely concealed amusement that coincidentally placed his own flower basket over his bits. Blakeney outright giggled.

Narcissa ignored them all, sailing unconcernedly over to hold her hands out to Madam Nell. “Magistra,” she greeted her, making a courtesy that Lily couldn’t quite make out. It wasn’t exactly either a curtsey or a bow, suggesting both but being done just with her head and shoulders—Lily thought.

“Ah, but you must call me Nell, _ma petite,_ ” Madam Nell told her, smiling, still a bit quizzically. “I thought, when you came in so fiercely, that you are our warrior-bride, but perhaps it is that you are our matron, is it not so?” She turned the quiz to Evan.

“Well, that’s what _I_ thought,” Evan agreed. “Technically in our family it’s her mum or mine, but there are a few problems there either way and no one’s in much doubt where the trust and duty will resolve in the end. Madam Nell, this is my cousin, Narcissa Malfoy, who likes to call Severus her sister for reasons unbeknownst to Merlin or muggle.”

“I will not ask you if you know why you are here,” Madam Nell dimpled. “May I change your robes, until you leave this place?”

Narcissa made the same absurdly graceful gesture (Lily noticed, this time, that her elbows moved just a little, too), and stood still while what looked like the wizardly equivalent of a stupidly posh hiking frock in colors that were _begging_ for grass stains were transfigured into, yes, exactly the same robes as the other women’s. These were wine-red, with deeply blue-purple trim, and they made Narcissa look paper-white with hair too yellow to be real. It actually wasn’t a terribly good look for her, although Lily thought they would have been good colors for Sev’s sort of pale.

She bent to give Blakeney a warm hug and nodded a cold, “Potter,” at Lily, getting a mocking, “Malfoy,” in return. Then she moved to stand next to Mrs. Prince, and Lily only just saw the start of some quiet introductions. If she hadn’t been to school seven years with the snooty porcelain bint, she wouldn’t have seen how strongly those introductions affected her. Mrs. Prince clearly didn’t notice a thing, but Lily watched her throat recoil under her smiling face, and watched her eyes narrow, and watched her consider whether or not to claw the woman’s face off before deciding on a charm offensive. It would have been terrifying if Lily hadn’t seen Slytherins operate before, or if she’d had any reason beyond simple humanitarianism to care about Mrs. Prince. As it was, it just made her even more wildly curious.

“And now, my little mother, it is of all things the most unfortunate that we are so distracted in the middle of our hellos!” Madam Nell smiled contritely at Lily, holding out her hands again. “There is no need for you to be distressed because this is for you a new ceremony, no! You see,” she gestured around the circle of the sand-pit, “we are five, and you will always be fourth, or you will act together with your schoolfellow.” Sadly, the schoolfellow she indicated was Black. “It will be so-clear, what you are to do, and if it is not so clear, _bien!_ I will tell you.”

“But my baby,” Lily began helplessly.

Madam Nell got an expression a lot of people got around Sev, Sirius, and James, and Sev got around almost everybody. It said _I would roll my eyes, but then I’d be doing it constantly._ “It is only for me to look at him before I see that my silly bee has charmed him with sleep,” she said, in a tone that was only one personality away from dryness and probably-fond disgust. “I do not think he will wake before we have finished, me.”

It took Lily a second to realize she could only mean Dumbledore. “…I’ll kill him,” she decided. Dumbledore almost certainly knew what he was doing enough that a sleeping charm wouldn’t _hurt_ Harry, but he _hadn’t asked her._

“When he is so wrongheaded, I turn him into a frog,” Madam Nell suggested, dimpling conspiratorially. “It is the only way to tell him he has done wrong, you see, because when he is a frog he must eat flies instead of sweets.”

As much as she didn’t want to mock her old Headmaster in front of all these Slytherins, Lily couldn’t keep a sporfle in. That _would_ be cruel.

Madam Nell raised her wand inquiringly, and Lily nodded gamely, even though she still didn’t know what was going on. The robes her peasant blouse and jean skirt turned into probably clashed badly with her hair; they were red with black trim. Not wine-red like Black’s, but distinctly flamelike. Mrs. Prince’s were, too, a bit, almost as fiery as they were autumnal, but it was somehow a different _sort_ of fiery.

Lily had been Sev’s friend for a long, long time, if you counted the times when she wasn’t, and had sat all of Ancient Runes with him even when they weren’t talking, and for a shorter time she’d been friends with Ravi Patil, who’d had the barefaced nerve to name her twins for goddesses. For whichever or both of those reasons, it made her think of the difference between longing for Hestia’s warm hearth and praying that one of the more fathomable forms of Kali was out storming the world, licking up the blood of evil before it could multiply. Both meant wanting to be safe, but it was different.

The witch in grey motioned Lily to the spot between Black (ugh) and Blakeney, but Lily veered off to see if Sev was all right and say hello and possibly hit him herself. He’d straightened up and got his breath back, and was now examining his waistcoat in bemusement.

She planted her hands on her hips ( _bless_ that woman in the inn, hands-free was definitely the way to carry a baby) and demanded, “Severus Snape, what have you dragged me into?”

“You’ll do fine,” Severus dismissed her vaguely, holding his waistcoat out to look at it. “Good grief, I don’t even think these will come out.”

“Of _course_ they won’t,” Black called in a cross voice that was trying to be a gay one.

“My trousers didn’t do this when you kicked me in the shins,” he complained.

“You’re wearing your Quidditch boots, Spike,” Evan called helpfully, hand plastered over his face.

Honestly, Lily could understand why he was preoccupied. His waistcoat had sprouted all sorts of words. The ones that stood out most were _THIEF!_ and _CAD!_ and _DESPOILER OF PURE YOUNG LADIES!_

In a similarly helpful voice, Black informed him, “If you take it off, it will start crying for the Aurors.”

Severus shot her a narrow-eyed look of hatred and death. He sighed, flicked his wand, and held out his hands. A number of vials flew out to fill them from pockets Lily hadn’t noticed. and then the waistcoat went up in flames. It was very fast; they’d gone out before Lily could scream. “I _liked_ that waistcoat,” he said mournfully, brushing the ashes off his shirt and redistributing the bottles.

“It was pretty ugly, Naj,” Blakeney said apologetically.

“All his clothes are ugly, darling,” Black informed her sadly.

“Couldn’t you fix his taste?” the girl asked, wide-eyed, as though all her illusions were shattering.

“There’s nothing wrong with his taste,” Black explained irritably. “He simply chooses not to exercise it.”

Now Sev did acknowledge that Lily existed, by way of ruefully crossing gazes with her as they exchanged the thought that rich people did not understand the concept of making sensible choices while shopping, much less preferring durability and practicality to style when one couldn’t have them all at once.

“The girl’s posh, too?” Lily asked drolly.

“Her family doesn’t let it go to their heads, particularly,” Sev said judiciously, “but raw- _ther._ ” She smiled, and he said, seriously, “Thank you for coming.”

“I said I would, but Sev, what is going _on_?”

“You’ll work it out,” he said, his shoulders tightening. For just a moment, he looked afraid to his bones, in a way she hadn’t seen in years and years. Maybe not even then. Then he forced his shoulders down, chased the emotion out of his face, and strode past her.

He strode past everybody as if no one existed, except for brushing his fingers across Evan’s wrist, until he was facing Madam Nell, and then he went down on one knee. _“Mea magistra._ The honor you do us is beyond outrageous, and my gratitude is beyond words _.”_

“ _Mon appareil de fumée,”_ she laughed, raising him up and hugging him.

Lily, by this point, had come close enough to have a good view of Evan’s face, which was a study, and hear him mutter, in a tone that clearly hadn’t decided how it felt yet, “A device of smoke?”

“Will you enrobe him, Magistra, and befit him for this circle?” Black asked. There was some friend-mocking in it, despite the nicety of the words. That made Lily feel a little better about taking her place between the two Slytherin witches.

Madam Nell raised her wand, quite ready to oblige. Severus turned to Evan, though, all bones in his ashy shirt, and said gravely, “She will not.”

He tapped his shirt with his wand, and the dull mossy-slate of it, along with his grey trousers and summer mantle, all faded into what Lily could only call the shadow of her periphery: the uncolor that ringed her vision, that she could notice around the edges of her sight but never, never look at. He declared, “I come as I am.”

Evan passed Lily the flower basket and unpinned his outer robe, kicking it behind him out of the sandpit when it had slithered to the ground. Thankfully, he was wearing trousers, too, although they were the light and swishy wizarding sort that were really made to be worn under robes, that the older folks thought couldn’t decently be considered anything but underwear. They clearly _went_ with his waistcoat, both being _at the level of the base fabric_ a satiny blue so dark it was fighting to be called black that flared bright where the sun hit it.

The waistcoat was a profusion of embroidered peacock feathers, though, rustling coyly, and Lily could just make out a thicket of dark vines woven into the trousers. Really woven in, too, not sewn in on top. She couldn’t tell for sure and she didn’t particularly want to stare at Rosier’s trousers even to practice for writing fashion pieces (seeing as she didn’t want to write fashion pieces), but she thought they were rather spiky vines.

His silk shirt didn’t have buttons close enough to the collar for decency, in Lily’s opinion, and she felt as though he was mocking her House, between its tawny color with the sunny-lemon shimmer and the red-gold of his hair. She hadn’t minded that her own hair wasn’t a good match with her robes until he was standing there in his extremely showy shirtsleeves. Now, even though she was wearing the same robes as all the other women and had the possibly unique experience of suspecting she looked at least a bit better than Black in their respective colors, she felt violently underdressed.

Possibly seeing her face, or maybe Black’s sour one, he murmured, with a blithe unconcern she suspected of being defensive, “Your colors are traditional; that’s nothing to do with me.”   He moved up to sling an arm over Sev’s shoulders, and told him, “I come as I am.”

Severus turned to take him by the elbows, looked him up and down with no expression whatsoever, and blandly declared, “Absurd.”

That must have been some sort of private code, because Evan instantly melted into a mostly-vertical puddle and tried to turn Sev’s face inside out using only his mouth.

Black flicked her wand, and a blindfold appeared around Blakeney’s head. “I’m sixteen!” Blakeney complained.

“You’re not seventeen,” Black said firmly, “and _I am your prefect._ ”

“Once a king in Narnia?” Lily asked, but the only person who might have answered her instead of giving her a blank stare or a curling-lipped _ugh-muggles_ look was being attacked by a six-foot human hoover in silk.

Eventually, Sev did pry the giant remora off his face. In a tone of rather softer exasperation than Lily had ever heard from him, he demanded, “Are you done?”

“Never,” Rosier blinked, eyebrows up, as though it was a silly question whose answer he _knew_ Severus already knew.

He must have been right, too, because Sev’s mouth quirked just a little, and his eyes dropped in his version of _I could make a smart remark but I won’t_ , and he didn’t fight it when Evan appropriated his arm and made grabby-fingers at his hand. He just turned them, alone in the center of the sand-pit before the great pole of braided metal, to face little Madam Nell with her smiling young face and white hair and grey robes.

She held out her hands, and they each took one. It seemed, to Lily, as if the dust you always saw floating in sunlight was suspended. Maybe it wasn’t, but the breeze didn’t stop flowing and the birds didn’t stop chirping, the stream trickled on and everything felt suddenly stilled anyway. Madam Nell’s accent was usually less Obviously French than the way she used her words, but it was suddenly more pronounced, turning her words liquid as she recited:

_I sing Taliesin, I sing perfect metre, which will last to the end of the world._

_I know why there is an echo in a hollow_  
Why silver gleams, why breath is black, why liver bleeds,  
Why a cow has horns, why a woman is tender,  
Why milk is white, why holly is green  
Why a goat is bearded, why the cow-parsnip is hollow,  
Why brine is salt, why ale is bitter,  
Why the linnet is green and berries red,  
Why a cuckoo complains and why it sings—  
I know where the cuckoos of summer are in winter.  
I know what beasts are at the bottom of the sea,  
How many spears in battle, how many drops in a shower,  
Why a river drowned Pharaoh’s people,  
Why fish have scales,  
Why a white swan has black feet.

 _I have been a blue salmon._  
I have been a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain,  
A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,  
A stallion, a bull, a buck,  
I was reaped and placed in an oven.  
When I was roasted, I fell to the ground  
And a hen swallowed me.  
For nine nights was I in her crop.  
I have been dead, I have been alive.  
I am magic.

The chilling thing was that she didn’t look ceremonious, or as if she were enjoying the poetry or letting the words flow through her or, least of all, trying to be impressive. She looked a little sad, a little rueful, and _Lily believed her._

She let go their hands, and they stepped back without releasing each other. Lily didn’t know what was expected, but she did wonder if that was what made Black let out a breath that was probably as close as Black got to snickering.

Turning to Black, Madam Nell asked, “Witch of Evander’s House, how far back do you trace your blood?”

“To the thirteenth century, Magistra,” Black said promptly.

Turning to Mrs. Prince, Madam Nell hesitated, and then asked carefully, “Witch of Severus’s blood—”

Lily’s head snapped around to stare at Mrs. Prince so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. Okay, she’d never known Ms. Ellie’s maiden name, fair enough, Sev’s mum had never wanted to talk about her side of the family _at all_ , but the woman looked _nothing_ like any Snape _Lily_ had ever met.

…Although, when she looked very closely, the eyes…

“—How far back do you trace the House of your daughter’s birth?”

Mrs. Prince blushed in what looked like shame to Lily, and murmured, “Records aren’t entirely clear before Dangereuse de L’Isle—er, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grandmother.”

Lily looked at Black to see if that stuck in her craw. Disappointingly—maybe?—Black actually looked thoroughly vindicated, as though she wanted to bop Sev over the head and tell him _see?!_

When she looked back, Madam Nell was winking at her. “It is less frivolous than a coin flip, no? We must have some way to prevent them fighting, these old houses, when they come in less goodwill, is it not so?” Lily chuckled a little and shrugged, not sure if she was supposed to answer more than that, and Madam Nell turned back to the boys. “Then, Evander—”

“Evan, please,” Evan broke in, with more than a hint of begging. Lily saw Sev’s mouth quirk again.

“Ah! Then, Evan, we start all things with Severin’s side, if it is agreeable?”

Lily was just _barely_ distracted from the budding suspicion that ‘Sev’s side’ might mean something in particular when Evan airily waved, “Oh, let shabby old black cede to the royal colors, absolutely.”

“I _will_ kick you,” Lily heard Sev mutter, although she didn’t see his mouth move. Evan grinned.

“Evan, you have been the leader in bringing here to this place you who love S—” She looked at Sev’s face, which had its crushed-eyebrow resigned look on, and sighed, “Who love Sever _us_ , whose name was made to twist the tongues of poor Frenchwomen.”

Sev shrugged, looking happier.

“What,” she went on, “are the wishes those you have led bring to this circle?” She hesitated, and then said, “Little Miss Cleo, are you liking to show our good Severus how well you know your flowers?”

“Too right she is liking,” Sev answered for her, turning with one of his sharklike smiles. “Do not hope for an E, Miss Blakeney: expectations are high.” Lily thought that was unfair and might have said so except that Blakeney grinned back at him, clearly exhilarated.

“You, my Lily,” Madam Nell said, “will take the flowers and ring the circle with them, bud to stem. Little Miss Cleo will do the rest.”

“It’s a big circle,” Lily noted.

“Yes, yes, it is so,” Madam Nell agreed. “You will only come part of the way.”

Try as she might, Lily couldn’t hear what Blakeney said. Instead, she put down a ferny sprig with a little yellow ball she’d barely have called a flower and was swamped with remembering Sev and Remus and Mike Goldstein all shouting gleefully over each other in Arithmancy while Rosier kicked back with his feet on Mike’s desk and smiled muzzily in his sleep. She put down a bright scarlet geranium, and remembered Sev very awkwardly forcing himself to give her a one-armed hug, much less awkwardly and far too viciously abusing Petunia for what hadn’t even been a very clever dig, but had cut extra-hard for some reason.

She put down a bluebell and was rocked by competing waves of warmth and sadness and the ghosts of old betrayals as she heard Sev telling her he’d meant to sleep outside Gryffindor all night, he absolutely would have. A gorgeous blossom of night-purple leather-flower, and she flashed onto a thousand memories of Sev playing around with his cauldron and ‘the really good Greco-Roman dictionary’ in the school library, as he always called it, and a few of Evan humming absently to himself in windowseats, staring off into space with his quill scribbling away on a big notepad or some piece of thick parchment he’d set to hovering next to him.

And on, and on.

And it was just the same when she was done, and had, as instructed, handed her basket to Mrs. Prince (!) and gone back to stand between Black and Blakeney. Because Black started putting her own flowers down.

A perfect, delicate, starlike perfect purple and white columbine, with its trailing ends, and Lily remembered Sev up all night until he was greener than his school tie trying to get a recipe right, up in the air flying around Sirius to keep everyone’s attention away from Slytherin’s seeker and its other chasers. A twig laden with juniper berries and she saw something she didn’t remember: Evan flying past her own bright hair, his face a perfect mask, swinging his wand down to blow James’s up.

A sprig of something white and delicate that smelled gloriously of jasmine but didn’t look quite right, and she didn’t have any memories, exactly, at all, but her whole body pulsed warmly, craving Jamie like _mad_ just for a moment, even though she was obviously quite glad he wasn’t here. A branch of bright acacia, and she saw them twined around each other in a shadowed corner of the school, not snogging, but so close and with such a charge between them that no one would even have wondered—and, the moment someone turned the corner, very clearly nothing but friends again, Severus at about the level of skeptical sarcasm he reserved for people he tolerated who were talking absolute nonsense, and Evan grinning sleepily as if poking the Sev was the funnest game since throwing quills through Binns.

Finally, Black stood, the circle almost closed, with just some blue and white violets and a twig of elderflowers left in her basket. “Severus picked these himself,” she informed Madam Nell.

“Severus,” Evan said, drawing a sprig of mistletoe and a spray of heliotrope out of his breast pocket (it must have had a cushioning charm in), “can be invariably trusted not to keep his opinions to himself.”

Sev scowled at him, and rammed him with his shoulder, but not really as if he meant it. In fact, once he’d rammed him, he didn’t actually move away.

“Toss ‘em over, Cissa,” Evan said blithely.

“ _You_ don’t make it, idiot,” Sev hissed at him.

“Oh, right, sorry,” Evan agreed without contrition, and handed his own plants to Madam Nell. Narcissa did the same, and passed Mrs. Prince the basket.

Eyes dancing, Madam Nell made a mistletoe-and-heliotrope coronet, like the ones Lily and Blakeney and Black were wearing, and gave it to Evan, and an elder-and-violet one for Sev.

Rather uncomfortably, Sev pried himself away and told Evan, “While you stand at my shoulder, I know that you _know_ you will always have more truth than you may want.”

Evan’s mouth curled into a smile that was just a touch ironic.

Lily didn’t understand what was behind that, but Severus tilted his head sideways in equally ironic acknowledgement. “It’s my hope that…” he hesitated. “That you need never doubt, either, nor will, those truths that are failed by voice, or how ardently I mean them.” He touched a blue violet, looking rather as if he felt _he’d_ failed _himself_ a bit but wasn’t going to let that stop him, and shoved the coronet ungracefully at Evan.

“No, you _git,_ you put it on me,” Evan laughed, and directed his hands.

“It’s not _my_ fault I can’t reach, you _goon,_ ” Sev grumbled, but let himself be pulled around.

“You don’t even know what short _is,_ ” Blakeney muttered, very quietly, but she was smiling. Lily caught her eye and nodded emphatic agreement. She wasn’t as short as Blakeney still was, either, but Sev was definitely just complaining out of congenital Sevness; Evan didn’t have more than couple of inches on him. He only looked bigger because Sev was so skinny.

“Well,” Evan said, rather more casually, “while you’ve got me, you’ve always got devotion, but while I’m not a Ganesha-worshipper myself, I’d quite like all the obstacles swept away for you, and I’m game to try it. I s’pose Loki’s more our sort of god-saint-thingy, anyhow. I might have to take this out; did you _have_ to tie your hair back so high?”

“Yes, I did,” Sev said indignantly. “You’ve got to have _loads_ of it to tie it low, I see _no reason—”_

“Well, I see Cleo’s sitherwood flower wish is already being fulfilled,” Black remarked dryly to the hole of the sky.

“I just wanted them to make room to have fun,” Blakeney explained.

“That’s all right, darling,” Black comforted her slyly, “you needn’t worry—”

Lily couldn’t help finishing for her, “Everyone makes room to make fun of our Sev.”

Black stared suspiciously at her with at least three kinds of suspicion, at least two of which were quite sharp. She winked, and turned angelically back to Madam Nell, who winked back and asked, “Severus, what do you bring us?”

Sev reached into a cloak pocket and brought out a black pouch and what looked like maybe a pewter flask. “I bring earth from the Forest of Bowland, and water from the Black Lake of Hogsmeade.”

“Not from Sherwood?” Evan asked in surprise.

“I _like_ the Sherwood,” Sev explained without rancor, “I’m _at home_ in it. I’m not _from_ it.”

“Oh, right,” Evan agreed comfortably as Lily smiled, and he twined around Sev’s arm again.

“You’re going to need that,” Sev reminded him, looking amused. Evan made an uninterested noise.

“I am so sorry, my good friend,” Madam Nell was trying not to smile _too_ hard, “but yes, I must ask you, too, what you bring, and ask you now.”

Evan sighed, sounding put-upon, and let Sev go. In an _I’m cooperating, look at me cooperating_ voice, he pulled out his own pouch and flask and said, “I bring earth from the garden of Rosier Hall, and water from our flat in Dye-Urn.”

Without a word, Sev grabbed him and pressed their foreheads together, mistletoe cutting into violets. He didn’t kiss him, or try to speak, but Lily could feel his eyes blaze even without seeing them. Evan reached up quietly and touched his face.

 _“Mes petites,_ ” Madam Nell eventually prompted them, not unsympathetically.

Evan sighed and Sev got his barely-refraining-from-glaring-at-someone look as they moved apart, Evan to stand by Narcissa and Sev by Lily.

“Old friend of Evan, old friend of Severus, hold out your hands in a cup,” Madam Nell told them.

Black, Lily was annoyed to note, did it very prettily, but Lily thought she’d better not make a fool of herself trying. Sev’s eyes were amused along with her, and he said quietly, “Let the peacocks preen, we’ll just get on with it.”

“Too right,” Lily agreed, grinning, and made grabby-hands.

What he did with them was tip a pile of dirt out of his pouch onto them, about half of what was in there, and then cover it up with his own big man-hand and trace something in the air over the whole business with his wand. Lily had a strong sensation that heat and pressure and time were all boiling together in her hand without any of them quite touching her skin, and then it seemed she had a few small things instead of a pile in there.

The small things, when Sev lifted his hand, were dully shining black marbles, which they both regarded quizzically. “Did you know it was going to do that?” Lily asked.

“Not _exactly,_ ” Sev hedged. “I didn’t know the stone would be jet.”

They looked over at Black and Evan, who were also looking down bemusedly, in this case at some rainbow-shimmery marbles that potions-classes past told Lily were almost certainly moonstone. Eventually and rather sardonically, Evan said, “Ouch.”

“I think you needed the cushion, darling,” Black comforted him, giving his arm a rub and then pushing him and his marbles away towards the pole.

“What does that mean?” Lily asked, nodding at the black marbles, but Sev just looked uncomfortable and moved off with them. She sighed, hard.

The boys both gave Madam Nell their marbles, and Ev held out a hand for the rest of Sev’s dirt. His expression after Sev had done the wand-drawing thing was just like Lily had felt. When Sev took his hand away to reveal a few softly-rounded chunks of malachite, Evan burst out laughing and, ignoring his sour expression, hugged him. “P-p-protection for children!” he sputtered.

“Oh, shut up, it’s good for all _sorts_ of things,” Sev groused.

“I know, I know, but _Spike!_ ”

“I’m not giving them to you,” Sev told Madam Nell, still very sour. “I need them to relieve my stress.” Lily didn’t blame him: Evan was nearly crying with laughter into his collar. Which, she suppose, said a lot about the stress _Evan_ had been under, but she was ready for Sev to follow through on that kicking-him threat at any moment.

With a Buddha-smile, Madam Nell just accio-ed them away, but this didn’t really make anything progress, because Evan was howling, _“Self-destructive romantic tendencies!”_

Severus looked extremely cross, and then rather thoughtful in an exasperated-beyond-bearing sort of way, and then he bit Evan’s cheekbone.

Evan peeled away from him immediately, eyes completely round, and gushed, “ _Spike!_ Did you just _bite me in public?!”_

“Debatable,” Sev said haughtily. “Are you doing this or laughing at me?”

“Can’t I do both?” Evan appealed with enormous blue-ish puppy eyes.

“Not both at once,” Sev said, yes, severely, and thrust out his hands in a most chastising manner.

“Oh, well, that’s all right,” Evan decided, and tipped the last of his own dirt out.

He got rose quartz.

“I, too, shall laugh at you forever,” Severus informed him solemnly.

“I knew _that_ ,” Evan explained, perfectly cheerfully, and held out his pouch to Madam Nell. She tipped all the stones in, and then raised her wand.

The first thing that happened was the birds shutting up, and the buzzing of the insects. Then Lily’s skin felt odd and tight, and her ears popped. The flowers on the ground went completely flat, as if they’d been pressed in books.

Slowly, Lily noticed that the air in front of Madam Nell was sort of… shimmering. At first it was almost a normal shimmer, like the hot air over a smooth road, but then it began to take shape and color. First it was a pale blue liquid, and then it solidified into a metal-shiny red quaich—which, if Lily hadn’t been 90% clear on what was going on by now, would have brought her the rest of the way. The first and last time she’d seen that sort of shallow cup with it’s two straight handles sticking out, she and James had each been holding one of them, and sharing the wine between them. That one had been carved of gorgeous red stone, with his family crest in gold.

With one last twist of Madam Nell’s wand, it was transparent again. It could almost have been cut crystal, but it was _less there than that_. A cut crystal glass was opaque in ways that were hard to describe; this only had presence where the sun hit it exactly right. Lily knew, she _knew_ that it hadn’t been transfigured, only charmed solid: the cup was only air.

Madam Nell took hold of the cup and sheathed her wand. Evan tipped the pouch with all four types of pebbles into it, and he and Severus both emptied their flasks in. Madam Nell took a drink, and passed it to Mrs. Prince. She drank gingerly, as though it were very precious, and passed it to Black, who gave Sev and Evan a warmer smile than Lily thought she was capable of and took a very deep drink.

Sev staggered backwards in Great Shock (at her willingness to drink muggle-forest dirt, maybe? Lily couldn’t think of any other reason), and Black stuck out her tongue at him so viper-fast Lily almost didn’t catch it before passing the quaitch to her.

It had no weight at all. It was very cold, but not cold like ice—like the breeze one might consider killing for during the worst parts of the summer. When she drank, there wasn’t anything like what had happened when she and Black put the flowers down, but there was a regrettable briny tinge of flavor that she couldn’t help but identify as _eu de Giant Squid_.

When Madam Nell had got the cup back from Blakeney, Lily thought the boys would drink. She did hold it out as if to give it to them, but before they could move to take it, she said, “If anyone would lay a challenge, _mes petites,_ you must cry it now.”

She looked hard at Lily—as did Black—and then at Mrs. Prince. But it was Evan who raised his hand.

“Not funny,” Sev snapped, going very nearly blue-white.

“Not joking,” Evan agreed. He unaccountably had not caught fire from the force of all the incensed witches’ glares sizzling through the air at him.  Lily knew him well enough at this point to suspect he had at least noticed them, whatever he was pretending, but they didn’t _seem_ to be the reason his hand had shot down to grab Sev’s, so hard both their knuckles went yellow. “I challenge in _your_ name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next** : Oh, first let pass the black, lady, and then let pass the bay, but hold ye fast to the milk-white steed, and win me for what ye may.
> 
>  **Notes** : Apologies to F.J. Childe for the above. Contribute to Patricia C. Wrede, whose speech patterns I have unabashedly lifted for our own French witch. Nell's recital is old enough to be attributable only to Anonymous. I changed it enough at the beginning and end to let her speak for herself, in her own voice, the rest should be as is unless I left something out for irrelevance or something.
> 
> Oxygen can now be made solid. _Very, very briefly._ The process using technology is described something like the above process that uses alchemy, but Do Not Try This At Home.
> 
> I won't include all the flower language from the well-wishes, but here are the ones I thought would be most infuriating if not explained:
> 
> Elder: zeal
> 
> Heliotrope: devotion, faithfulness
> 
> Leatherflower/sitherwood/southernwood: jest, bantering
> 
> Mistletoe: "I surmount all obstacles"
> 
> Blue violet: love, devotion
> 
> White violet: innocence, candor
> 
> As for the crystal/stone stuff... opinions vary so very widely, and I have no idea what sources have credibility, or what credibility would really mean in this area. But here are some feeling-descriptions attached to stones that I went with (from varying sources, paraphrased for moderate brevity): 
> 
> **Jet** is 'a stone kind to people in difficulty and fear,' good for bringing grief gently to the surface for healing. Jet eases anxiety and depression, calming anxious or fearful thinking, especially if delusional. Ease of anxiety and depression can then bring about inner growth, increase self-reliance, and ease personal transformations.
> 
>  **Malachite** is a stone to enhance good fortune through one's own efforts, which can bring great self-confidence and success and defuse the weight of victimization by demonstrating one's own power. Malachite is protective—protective generally, but more specifically from evil, during pregnancy and childbirth, for children. It is also an excellent protection stone during flying and other travel. It helps dissolve blockages that have been entangled with the lessons of growth. As a part of growing this wisdom, malachite can ease the transformation from life to death, helping one make this trip gently and without fear.
> 
> (And yes, as part of encouraging balance and enhancing 'true' love and transmuting negativity to better things, it is supposed to help counter self-destructive romantic tendencies. This stone is a hard worker!)
> 
>  **Rainbow Moonstone** is calming, about creativity and compassion and the easing of emotional trauma. Unusually nature-associated in a botanical sort of way.
> 
>  **Rose Quartz** : ..yeah, this one's not subtle or obscure, it's totally what you thought. It's also supposed to help with self-respect.


	27. Devetashka Caves, Bulgaria (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, first let pass the black, lady, and then let pass the bay, but hold ye fast to the milk-white steed, and win me for what ye may.
> 
> (Snape vs. Potter, round 2)
> 
>  
> 
> with apologies to F.J. Childe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Notes** : I actually didn't intend for this event (which is to say, this ceremony) to happen when I was planning out the story. Severus was clear about that from the beginning: he had no intention in participating in anything so unnecessary and _establishment bourgeois_. It would just be _silly_.However, Evan Evanned, so here we are. I never claimed to have any control over these hellions. Slytherins do what they want.
> 
> The last bit, however, has been patiently waiting for about two years. I hope you enjoy. :D

“I thought,” Sev said tightly, his hand unenthusiastically half-open in Evan’s crushing grip, “that you wanted to _remove_ obstacles.”

“Remove them,” Evan agreed implacably, with a faint and amiable smile that Lily didn’t think meant anything at all.  “Not pretend they’ll go away if they’re ignored.”

Sev turned his head to look at him, like a rusty robot, and had a silent argument with a bland mask that wasn’t arguing back.

The silence stretched painfully, and Lily could almost hear the _snap_ when Black broke it.  Gently, she asked, “To whom do you think you should bring Severus’s complaint, Evvie?”

A bit relieved-looking, Evan turned to face her.  “Mostly you, I think, Matron.  But maybe also to Evans, here.”

“And you think I’m going to be on your side?” Lily asked, eyebrows raised.  Her arms were already tucked under Harry, supporting his weight and keeping it off her neck, or she would have crossed them.

“Everyone’s on Spike’s side,” Evan said.  “But only you know about…” he hesitated, and carefully finished, “what it means to him and what it’s done to him, being the child of his father’s people.”

Sev flushed furiously, and Lily beckoned him over.  He wouldn’t let her pull him out of the circle of flowers around the sand-pit to put an arm around his waist, but he did let her take his arm.  It was a bit awkward, because he wouldn’t let her step into the circle, either.

Speaking to Black, Evan said, “It’s taken me two years to get him to agree to this, and I don’t want to have _bullied_ him.”  He looked at Sev’s Face Of Flat Disbelief, and amended, “We can’t be in it _because_ I bullied him.”  

Sev nodded You May Proceed with Oozingly Sarcastic Grace.

If Evan was hurt by that, or rolling his eyes, he hid it well, doggedly re-addressing himself to Madam Nell. “He only agreed after we settled it that the Ministry wouldn’t have to know, that we’d only do what would make it real without making any display, that it would be strictly _need_ to know.”

“Well, thank you, darling,” Black said dryly.

“Well, we’re not suicidal,” Evan said, just as dryly, and her silvery eyes glinted in amusement.  “Cissa, part of that is just Spike being paranoid, which is not _entirely_ unjustified, and although I really do feel it’s a bit over the top under the current set of circumstances, I can’t blame him for wanting to keep information in reserve.  And I do know he’s always liked to keep private, and that’s fine with me.”

“No, it’s not,” Sev muttered.

“I can’t help it if it’s hard not to show you off,” Evan replied, unabashed.

Sev scoffed, and Ev threw out a there-you-have-it hand.  “See?  The _big_ part is that he _still_ thinks he’ll drag me down, and he _still_ thinks I ought to be ashamed of him.  He won’t admit it, but it’s true.  We can’t let that lethifold hide under our bed, Matron.”

Lily poked Sev in the side and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Potter, nobody here reads minds,” Black said irritably.

“HA,” Sev declared, and Evan looked as if he might have laughed if he hadn’t been feeling so strung-out.

“Little mother, bright warrior,” Madam Nell said kindly, after shooting Severus a repressive look (those almost never worked), “you have something to say to this challenge, yes?”

“Well, yes,” Lily agreed.  “Sev, I don’t know what you think your problem is—well, actually, yes, I do.  Are you going to make me say it?”

“I’m not making anyone say anything,” Sev growled.

She narrowed her eyes at him, her temper rising.  He’d claimed to be truth.  “ _Fine._  You asked for it, Sev: Jamie didn’t have any problem marrying a filthy little Mudblood prole like me _._ ”

She didn’t even have a chance to see whether he’d had any reaction to that at all before Evan had ripped him away from her, pressed him down to kneel on the ground and curled all around him, as if he was trying to be a blanket pulled over Sev’s head.  He was talking to Sev, but too quietly for Lily to hear.

The speed of his reaction, and, to a lesser extent, the way that Mrs. Prince was moaning, “This is our fault,” made Lily think that whatever the blazes was going on with Sev, she was going to be blamed for not having expected it.  Therefore, she looked challengingly at Black.

It was a coolly bored blue gaze that met her eyes, though.  “I’m so glad you understand,” Black said pleasantly, and Lily glared.  It made Black’s smile cinch even more _charmingly_ sweet.  Condescendingly, she said, “But don’t you see, Mrs. Potter, Severus’s case is nothing like yours.  No one who meets him doubts that he is anything less than a power in his own right, no matter how hobbled, and will come to be at the very _least_ a full partner to anyone he allies with, whatever his title.  Nor does he have…” Her gaze swept Lily up and down, rather dismissively.  “…Your particular advantages.  It’s not only outside his nature but out of his stars to be either a trophy wife or a broodmare.”

Lily smiled back, just as sweetly.  “I suppose you would know,” she agreed.  “How _is_ little… Darko, was it?  It was such a _big_ announcement in the Prophet, I’m afraid I can’t remember all the details.”

“Lucius is quite a proud papa,” Black acknowledged demurely.  “He wants to be quite sure that _his_ son grows up knowing that he was always wanted, and never hidden away like something to be ashamed of.”

“The occasional show of human emotion would do that better than any display flashing one’s gold about can manage,” Lily supposed with wide-eyed thoughtfulness, “but well done bringing the topic back to Evan’s concerns, I suppose, Malfoy.”

Black lifted her eyes to the heavens in expressive disgust, and murmured, “Salazar save us all from Gryffindor grindylows.  Evvie?” she called, louder.  “Is he with us?”

“Perhaps,” Madam Nell began, stepping nearly to where the flower-ring wasn’t quite closed.

“I don’t need _help,_ ” Sev spat, cutting her off.

Next to Lily, Blakeney flinched, but she was ignoring that.  She needed one hand around Harry and the other on her wand.  It wasn’t that Sev with his hackles up didn’t care who he hurt, it was that he had to prove something stupid about what kind of caring it was. He didn’t usually lash out to do physical harm without being threatened that way first, but then again, he didn’t usually have to.

Sev sort of folded himself out of the Evan-blanket, his face still very white and set.  “All right,” he snarled.  “You wanted to prove something, Ev—go ahead.   _Be tried._ ”

“I will,” Evan said, not letting go of his knee, “but Spike, I didn’t think she’d, after—”

“That’s because you’re _spiteless space alien_ who _does not understand normal human monsters,_ ” Sev snapped, glaring at him.  “Neither time nor bandages stop wounds _festering._   _Don’t open them without antiseptic._ ”

“I was trying to _apply_ antiseptic!” Evan protested, his eyes open so wide Lily sort of half-thought he was flapping his hands in distress, although he wasn’t.

Sev crossed his arms and glared even more, although that should not have been possible.  Menacingly, he demanded, “Did you bring enough for everybody?”

Evan sat back on his heels a little, and his mouth and eyes both went sideways.

At Lily’s right, Blakeney burst out in a mostly-quiet explosion of giggling contained only by the hands she’d plastered over her face.  When she saw that everyone was looking at her, she gave a little wave, and gasped, “Hi, Naj.  Um.  We missed you!”

Sev sat back on his heels, too, and slumped into his mournful-bloodhound Why Life Why look.

“Sev, I wasn’t trying to talk about me,” Lily said—earnestly, if not gently.  “I meant—if Evan’s right, that’s _nonsense._  There’s nothing wrong with us.  Anything _some_ idiots say is wrong with us, I’ve got more of that than you do, and the bloke who married me is from a family that’s held in very high esteem by the same idiots.”

“First: considerably less so since he married you,” Sev told her bluntly.  “Especially since he wasn’t disinherited for it.  That’s the usual remedy.”  Everybody, Lily noticed, carefully avoided looking at Mrs. Prince, whose face had gone far too withered-apple for the 40-ish Lily would previously have pegged her as.  “His parents are given some social leeway since they’re too old to for starting a new heir to have been an even semi-reasonable option, but I think you’ll find the name commanding less value in the circles of greater power as time goes on.”

He held up a hand, and added, “I don’t tell you to care, only what I think you may expect.  Second: Narcissa is quite right about how much may be forgiven those who are attractive and charming and willing and able to extend their spouse’s bloodlines.  I meet none of these criteria _shut up Ev._ ”

“As long as my objection is registered,”  Evan said mildly.

“Noted, denied, and ignored.”

“Oi!”

“Third, you do _not_ have more of ‘anything’ ‘some idiots’ might say is wrong with us than I do.  Your father, before his retirement, was a very well-respected and high-ranking judge, and I only met you because he owned a summer home.”

“We had a summer place because he was an _Assizes_ judge, Sev,” Lily protested.  “We didn’t go north on holiday, he was _assigned_ to be there.”

“Nonetheless, you can say ‘my father was the equivalent of a wizengamot sorcerer who owned multiple residences,’ and any wizard will correctly divine your social class, whether or not he cares that it’s a class-amongst-muggles.  That _is_ an advantage, and it comes across to anyone who talks to you, whether or not they _understand_ what they’re seeing, and it isn’t one I have.”

“That’s true,” Black said, to Lily’s surprise.  She wouldn’t have thought Black would admit muggles had gradations of class beyond scum and better-armed-scum.  “But, darling, if Evans had told me her mother was a Prince,” she nodded to Mrs. Prince, “even if she’d been in Slytherin, even if we’d been friends, I wouldn’t have believed her.  I believed you immediately because it made _sense._ ”

“Well, yes,” Sev said drolly, “there was a wincing little announcement in the Prophet and everything.”

“No, darling,” Black said, tilting her head sympathetically.  “Do you happen to recall what everyone found strange, our first Welcome Feast?”

Sev shot her a you’re-odd look. “Well,” he said slowly, “I think I should _begin_ with _‘gorilla, aardvark, dormouse, donkey,_ ’ and perhaps go on to—”

“ _Somebody_ setting the Hat on fire?” Lily suggested, grinning at him.

“I was going to say candles positioned so as to drop hot wax on everyone’s hair and food,” Severus replied with dignity.

“I assumed that was showing off,” Lily told him, “since they didn’t. Burn people, I mean.”

“I’m not sure it’s showing off when Flitwick decides it’ll be fun to do something pretty,” Evan said, for all the world as if he didn’t know he was in disgrace and on thin ice.

“About the feast itself, children,” Black said long-sufferingly. “Which is to say, the food.”

“Oh, the humbugs on the table with the proper food,” Lily said at once, at the same as Sev, lips curled, distastefully answered, “Dumbledore’s ridiculous fetish for boiled sweets.”

“Yes, exactly,” Black nodded, pleased with them in an ever-so-slightly-smug way Lily’s hand itched to slap. “We all grew accustomed to them, of course, but what did you find odd about it at the time, Potter?”

“This is to embarrass me,” Lily declared the obvious, glaring at her, then shrugged when no one seemed surprised, chagrined, abashed, angry on her behalf, or even impatient. Giving in with a sigh, she declared the also-obvious: “Sweets come _after_ the meal, and the only reason for mint to be on the table is if it’s in tea or in jelly for lamb—what?”

Sev was looking at her funny. “Er… no, Lils, it was odd because the mint wasn’t fresh. That is,” he fumbled over himself anxiously, just as if he were nine and afraid she’d never meet him at the park any more, “yes, I suppose you _could_ say it was because sweets come after the meal. It really is the same thing, I suppose.”

Black shot him a disgusted and despairing must-you-embarrass-yourself look and shook her head a little. When she spoke, though, it was kindly. “Tell Evans why the mint belonged there, Severus.”

He blinked suspiciously at her, but told Lily, “It’s a palate-cleanser. At informal feasts like that, where all the food except pudding is put out at once, you always put out bowls of something like fresh mint leaves. It could also be iced cucumber salad or a dry sorbet or granita. The idea is to enjoy each dish in whatever order you like, without getting all the flavors muddled. But the mint oughtn’t to have been in humbug form; sweets leave an aftertaste. Entirely counterproductive. The man’s sweet tooth is the size of a smilodon’s; he makes it so obvious it’s a wonder he bothers with the pro-forma pretense of passwords. Although I suppose having his visitors shout the entire contents of Honeydukes at his gargoyles at least gives him a few moments to refill the sherbet-bowl.”

“And _that_ was what you complained about at the time,” Black began triumphantly.

“I didn’t complain, I _noted,_ ” Sev objected with his most mulish face.

“And _that,_ ” repeated Black, this time pointedly, “was what you complained about at the time, and the pumpkin juice being ‘sticky and overspiced.’ And you ate dish by dish and took water between like everyone else, and, darling, if you’d been watching the rest of us to check our table manners, believe me, I would have noticed.”

“I believe you,” Sev and Evan and Blakeney chorused, one more drily than the others.

She stuck up her pinchy nose a bit, and went firmly on. “Everyone else with whose surnames I was unfamiliar just loaded a bit of everything on their plates and troughed through it all at once. They either acted as if the humbugs might bite them or were pleased about getting sweets with their meal.”

“ _I_ acted as if the humbugs might bite me,” Sev said warily. Lily’s eyes felt crinkly, and Mrs. Prince looked oddly eager and glowy.

“Yes, darling,” Black said patiently, “but you thought they were odd because you were a wizard, not because you were a muggle.”

“What does that mean?” Lily asked sharply, her eyes uncrinkling and narrowing instead.

“It means,” Evan put in firmly, “that Spike came to Hogwarts missing a lot of things that would have helped him, but he was _raised by his mother_. And even if he didn’t come to Hogwarts with anything resembling manners—”

“I beg your pardon.”

“—He did come with perfect _etiquette_.  The kind that if it’s normal you don’t bother with it except at exactly the times you’re supposed to, except the bits that never stop, and trying to fake it is a constant and confusing strain. The kind that’s never going to come naturally if you weren’t raised with it from birth. You’ll always come across as,” he hesitated. “Well, as not quite… not quite quite. Trying too hard.”

“ _Lucius,_ ” Sev coughed innocently into his hand, clearly hoping only Lily would hear him.

Evan looked more as if he was kindly humoring Sev, possibly as a reward for being funny, than as if he really hadn’t heard. “And once he was using words people could understand and started standing up straight—”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Everybody could see it, just as clearly as they can see _you_ grew up without being allowed to doubt how good you are,” he said.  Now he was talking to Lily, but he’d put his hand back on Sev’s knee.  “I don’t mean you should doubt it, Evans.  I mean everyone’s given different advantages, if they can use them that way. Advantages different people recognize.  And care about.”

“You are _such_ a Slytherin,” she said, but she said it almost fondly.

“People who try too hard get things done,” Sev told Evan neutrally.

“I know, Spike,” Evan said.  “I didn’t say he’s useless.  Lucius is just the best way we’ve got to explain something indefinable.”

“Mm,” Sev hummed, instead of the two or ten snide remarks Lily could see he would have made if she, a Gryffindor, hadn’t been there.  He looked very tired.  “When can we go home?  Oh, _wait._ ”

“Spike,” Evan said helplessly, and scooted over to side-hug him.  He didn’t let go, and eventually Sev sighed a little, and leaned in.  “We can go home when you know you don’t have to go anywhere to be home.  And you don’t feel guilty about it.  And you don’t think I’m going to start resenting you for it.”

“Aargh,” Sev uttered, utterly frustrated, and ground his eyes into Evan’s shoulder.  Whose owner shrugged, still helplessly, and looked beseechingly at Madam Nell.

“You didn’t warn me you would do this, _mon petit,_ ” she said reproachfully.

“Our fer-de-lance never warns anybody about anything,” Black said long-sufferingly.  “He probably thought of it while he was opening his mouth.”

“I plan things sometimes!” Evan protested.

Sourly, Sev asked, “What about this time?”

“I plan… when we make dinner reservations,” Evan insisted.

“And this time?”

“And I make sketches for landscapes and _everything_.”

“And this time?”

“And I go on site and look at people’s wardrobes and talk about their pets with them and we go through their jewel-boxes and all over their grounds or wherever else they think they’d like, and—”

“That would be a ‘no comment,’ then,” Sev told Black dryly.

Just as dryly, she replied, “Well, Nimue’s oak, darling, that could just mean, oh, _anything._ ”

“If anybody had warned me to think of such a thing,” Madam Nell continued as though just continuing her previous sentence, “perhaps I could have thought of a thing _mon appareil de fumée_ might like even a little bit that would convince him.  But in this way?  Bah!”

“Well, Sev’s never cared if he liked anything as long as it worked,” Lily told her.

Madam Nell pursed her lips, and then concluded, “Matron and sorceress and old friend of Evander. Bright warrior, old friend of Severus. Come to me and we will speak.”

“She could use our names,” Lily grumbled, half to Black and half under her breath as they walked around the ring of flowers.

“It’s not her fault Severus insisted on such a small ceremony that those titles only mean she’s called over two celebrants instead of five,” Black replied almost civilly and definitely resignedly.  “Which, I feel _quite_ safe in assuming, is why we’re only seven including the boys instead of all of Evvie’s family and firm and most of Slytherin and half of Ravenclaw and the entire research floor of St. Mungo’s.  He’s _such_ a goose.”

“My god, we agree on something,” Lily gasped, grinning.

Black sniffed and put her nose up.  “Don’t let it go to your head, Potter.”  She exchanged a look with Mrs. Prince, as they passed her, that was so fleeting that Lily would have missed it if it hadn’t left Mrs. Prince sagging and hangdog and flushed.

“What was that about?” Lily hissed.

“The magistra _should_ have called over the witches of their blood to this conclave,” Black had the courtesy to say quietly, “but Severus’s grandmother doesn’t know him at all, so what could she have to say?  Evvie’s still trying to determine whether she had any choice in that.”

“Maybe he isn’t still,” Lily suggested, “if they invited her.”

Black leveled an _honestly, can even Gryffindors be this naïve_ look at her. “Really, Potter, it’s called _rope._ ”

Lily frowned and would have asked another question, but at this point Madam Nell’s amazing nearly ground-length kimono-sleeves were folding her and Black (and Harry) into what Black would probably not have called a football-huddle.  She’d thought their robes were all the same cut, but she didn’t have sleeves like that.

When they’d heard her proposal, Black said firmly, “Absolutely _not_.”

“No, I did not think he would like it,” Madam Nell agreed, “but—”

“Like it!” Black repeated, eyebrows arched.  “Magistra, when one suggests that he’s a clever enough wizard to attempt animagery he throws an _actual tantrum_ and accuses one of accusing him of not being a real human being.  And animagery, I need hardly point out, is under one’s own control.”

That might have made Lily feel a little queasy, not to mention indignant on her boys’ behalf, except it was just Sev being odd.  “Besides, it wouldn’t work,” she put in.

Madam Nell smiled at her.  “No?”

She shook her head.  “He isn’t worried about _Rosier_.  He’s worried everyone will think he’s fed him amortentia or just wants him for his money or something equally dim, and then they’ll sneer at Evan and eventually Evan will notice and hate him and also maybe lose business.”  She didn’t have to ask him to know.  

“That does sound like Severus.”  Lily wasn’t sure whether Black’s annoyance was for Severus or for her, but she did sound _most_ aggrieved, especially when she sighed.  “What you’re saying, Potter, is that the Magistra’s plan only needs to be reversed.”

She winced for Sev, and even for Evan, but nodded.

“I agree,” Black said reluctantly, but her nod was sharp.  She didn’t wait for anyone else to have anything else to say, but drifted lightly back to her place in the circle.

Lily didn’t go back straightaway.  First, she pointed into the quaich, and asked Madam Nell, “Can I use two of those?”

“Only two?  Yes, this will be all right,” the witch agreed, looking curious.  “Evan?  Evan, will you look at me, my friend?  No, no, I do not ask you to come up to me, only meet my eyes.”

Lily didn’t pay too much attention to that, because she was busy bespelling the pieces of moonstone and rose quartz she’d fished out of the cup as she walked back to her place.

“Stand, if you please,” Madam Nell requested.  “Evan, we have listened to you, and it was your intention to challenge yourself in Severus’s name, is that true?”  Evan nodded, his hand still tangled with Sev’s.  “But once we have heard you, we find that you are giving voice to Severus’s challenge to himself, not to you.  Severus, is this wrong?”

“I wasn’t challenging _anybody,_ ” Sev said, exasperated.

“You did say ‘be tried,’ Sev,” Lily reminded him.  “You said if Evan wanted to prove something, it should be proven.”

“That is _not—”_

“False to the spirit of what you were feeling,” Black cut in sternly.  Sev shut up, and shot her a betrayed look.  “And as much as I adore you, darling, you aren’t wrong to want armor against old cats who don’t know you and could hurt him.  You’re right to think it can’t come easily or painlessly, of course, but quickly is another matter.”  She gave him a pitying look, and said, “This trial would be no trouble for my husband, of course, but still, _your_ sort of cobra might at least have a _chance…_ ”

“Narcissa, what the _hell—”_

Lily cut him off by whistling—just a few lines of Steeleye Span.  She didn’t know if he still remembered it.  He’d got so _bored_ with them once she’d made him take her to a Gravy Train concert and started him on a frankly crazy-eyed hunt for music that didn’t drive him mental by being _almost alive enough to brew to_ , whatever that meant. But there had been a year or two when they’d listened to the old ballads and tried to work out how likely they were to have any truth in them.

So now she just gave him a couple of lines of warning, because this was supposed to be a test, wasn’t it?  It wasn’t supposed to be easy.  So she whistled:

_She’s away to Carterhaugh to flower herself a gown_

_She had not picked a rose, a rose, a rose but barely twa…_

And he was quite bright, was her Sev, because he whipped away from Evan at once, his dark eyes rounding in horror, and he whispered, “You have got to be _fucking_ kidding me, our Lils—”

She smiled at him, and tossed him the enchanted pebbles.  When he caught them, the rose-quartz turned into a red and white rose, the moonstone into a bright yellowy-orange one.  He yelped as his hands closed around the stems, but that was just surprise; she unfortunately knew that a few thorn-pricks were nothing to him.  When his wide eyes jerked up to hers again, she advised, “Hold on.”

“Evans,” Evan said irritably, “What on earth—?”

But then he couldn’t say anything else, because Sev had tackled him to the ground and knocked the breath out of him.

Madam Nell quietly touched her wand to the earth, to the last gap between the flowers, and a little _zip_ of light ran from it to hit Evan’s heel.  She immediately filled the gap with an X of vervain lightly tied over a juniper sprig, enchantment over protection, and everyone felt pushed back a step as the ring silently thrummed.

Everyone also _wanted_ to take a step back, because Evan had turned into a giant mass of writhing, thorny vines that were beating all around themselves.  Lily couldn’t see how much damage they were doing, because the thrumming had resolved into a swirling dome of translucent petals.  She could see past them, but not in detail.

Panicking with guilt, she looked at Black, and managed to bring herself to start to ask, “Um, did I…?”

“It’s the sigil of his House, Potter, don’t be stupider than you can help,” Black answered tersely, busy straining her eyes in.

Unless Lily was very much mistaken, Severus had just unhinged his jaw like a starving anaconda and crunched savagely down on a vine like a bloody-minded terrier.

The writhing stopped, possibly in incredulity (she wouldn’t have blamed it), and then Severus was holding a _sodding enormous_ brown snake with a very pretty diamond pattern, bright black eyes, and the biggest, curviest, nastiest, _pinkest_ fangs Lily ever wanted to see, _ever_.  They were so big she could see they had _hand-length clear needles dripping poison_ angling into the snake’s mouth, because the snake was so big it took up the whole sand pit.

Lily was fairly sure nobody was going to tease Sev for the yipe that escaped him (which was, to be perfectly honest, more than a bit squeaky) when he realized what had happened.  Especially because he made it because the snake was trying to _bite his head off_ , and his other reaction to that was to _swing behind the damn thing’s head_ and cover it with a) a full-bodied neck-hug and b) a coating of frost, all without letting go of either rose.

She was starting to feel really guilty about those; she’d just meant them as a _clue,_ for god’s sake.

The snake started swaying, going sluggish, and then it slumped into…

Into _ick._  That was the only word that occurred.  It was just a… a great, big, slimy, reeking black _ick_ that Sev’s arms slowly sank through, and… and turned him pink, and started steaming holes into his clothes…

“Oh, who’s the diced flobberworm with no ego now?” Sev bellowed, incensed.  “If I’m not allowed to get away with this shite, neither are you!  Stop it _at_ _once_ or I’m burning _every single one of your waistcoats_ immediately we unpack!  And don’t think I won’t have Linkin on my side, because when I tell him about this _insult—!”_

Then he, nearly in the same instant, disappeared into a mound of snarling grey-brown fur and screamed in pure panic.

Lily nearly stopped breathing.  She wasn’t alone in being plastered to the dome of petals; Black and Blakeney were both right next to her. Black looked as though confusion was making her terror worse, but even though Lily thought she knew what this was about, she couldn’t have helped her yearmate out even if she’d wanted to.  She didn’t know how Madam Nell knew, unless it was because she and Sev were clearly close in a way he hadn’t been with his Hogwarts teachers, but this one wasn’t about Rosier _at all._

That was why they both saw the wolf pulling away with a whimper when Sev started smacking it on its giant nose with the yellow rose’s stem, and failing to get away because he’d used the red and white one to tangle his fist inextricably into its chest fur.

And then the petals faded, and Madam Nell was cutting the trumpet flower away from the valerian, leaving the circle closed.  And it was Evan’s human nose that was scratched up, and Sev had at least succeeded in destroying _one_ of the poor man’s waistcoats.  Sev himself was all cut up from the thorns, and the black goo had _not_ helped there. As if that weren’t enough, he was an unaccustomed pink all over and the ordinary shirt and trousers he’d turned all elegant were in utter tatters.  The mantle had been half torn off him, and was hanging down his back in quite the wrong way.

“—are those for?” Evan finished, still irritably.  And then, in surprise, touching his nose, “Ow.”  And then, his eyes just about falling out of his head as he scrambled closer, “ _Spike?!”_

“I’ve got you,” Sev mumbled, “you _idiot_.”

“What happened?” Evan demanded.  Lily thought he was patting Severus over in a panic or feeling him up, but then he fetched a vial out of Sev’s shirt and started dabbing at him with the stopper.

“What did—stop that—what did you _think_ was going to happen?” Sev growled, batting his hand away and trying with great dedication to burst the yellow bloom over his head.  Lily had made it out of stone, though, and hadn’t made it to be fragile: it didn’t.  “If you meant the sacrifice to be of mere time and effort, you should have introduced the idea _before the ceremony!”_

“Sacrificing was the opposite of the point!”

“You have to _put in to get out,_ you—you—you _dunderhead!  Theory of Magic Zero-oh-One!”_

“I am getting you _out_ of the Balkans, it’s doing terrible things to your vocabulary,” Evan decided.

_“That was English!!!!  If it is between Scotland and London it is STILL ENGLAND, YOU BACON-FACE PONCE_ _!!!”_

“Cleo,” Evan said, ignoring the face-thwapping he was getting as best as one could with the occasional mouth full of rose petals—which Lily thought was fair, since it would have been easier for Sev to get him with the thorns than not, and it was 100% not, “I don’t suppose you’d like to fill me in?”

Blakeney looked across Lily at Black, and then told Evan, “You’ve got a pensieve, Lance.”

Sev stopped hitting Evan with his rose to look at Blakeney with approval.  “Cruel, Blakeney.  However, I am not currently authorized to assign points.”

“Are you going to be?” she asked with interest, while Evan gaped at Sev with giant tragedy eyes of apprehension and betrayal and clutched at his tattered shirt-front.

“Professors Dumbledore and Slughorn and I will jointly determine the details of my role once I’ve got back to Hogwarts with my research from this trip,” he explained, sliding his arm down to Evan’s shoulder.

“Wait, I thought you said—” Lily started.

Evan stopped trying to guilt Sev (who that never worked on, and hadn’t been looking at Evan anyway) to shoot her a quizzical look.  “It’s called being less than over-generous with information in front of someone who hates him, Evans.”

Black cleared her throat gently.  “Severus, darling, may I ask a question?”

“Certainly, Narcissa,” he replied, absurdly graciously for a man tangled up on the ground in effectively rags, looking like he’d been dragged backwards through a hedge with a sunburn.

“The next time that my sister, say, makes a not-terribly-clever remark about how Evan ought to clean his shoes after he steps in the mud, what do you plan to say to her?”

“SOD OFF MINE,” Severus snapped instantly, his hand snapping closed on Evan’s loose, low collar.  Lily wondered, through the hand she’d stuffed in her mouth, whether that was _why_ Evan wore a loose, low collar.  Sev followed this with a look that said a sheepish _er_ , but he didn’t actually say it.  Instead, in fact, he hunched his shoulders and glared at everyone—including Evan, presumably for looking too happy.

Black’s eyes went all sparkly and her mouth got rather strained.  “In that case,” she said in an equally strained voice, “once you’ve apologized for using _atrocious language in front of ladies and children,_ I think we may proceed?”

“I need to fix Spike up,” Evan said.

Sev shook his head dismissively.  “After.”

_“Spike…”_

“After.”

“May I fix your _clothes?”_

Sev considered.  “You can fix my half-cloak.  It might be damaged enough to compromise the spells on the pockets.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Evan told him, but since he put his arms around Sev to fix the mantle, once they’d levered each other up, instead of turning Sev around so he could see what he was doing, Lily didn’t think he had any room to talk.

When they were leaning on each other in front of her, Madam Nell asked, “Are there any further challenges?  I must warn you, _mes enfants,_ it is of all things the most possible that if someone says that there are,” she gestured behind her, “I will hit them with this very pole.”

“I think it’s _lovely,_ ” said Mrs. Prince (who still, it turned out, existed), sounding very upset.  When Lily looked at her, she was still wringing a handkerchief that she’d reduced to such a tight rope Lily couldn’t even tell what color it was.  Sev and Evan looked at each other, but they were facing Madam Nell and Lily couldn’t see their expressions.

“Yes, Miss,” Blakeney said kindly, after a moment.  “That’s right.”

Holding out the quaich, Madam Nell told the boys, “Then come and drink.”

Dubiously, Sev held up his roses.  He’d got the thorns off them at some point.  “Should I put these back?”

Evan started laughing, a touch hysterically, clutching him tighter, but Madam Nell just smiled gently.  “No, _mon fumèe,_ it is not a necessary thing.”

“Can I put them _down_ at some point?” he asked plaintively.  Evan nearly doubled over.  Scowling, Sev tucked the roses into his wreath (his own had survived in much better shape than his clothes), and preemptively scowled at everyone, “I’m holding _him,_ it still counts.”

Lily decided that not only didn’t she dare tell him the roses had just been an added flourish at this point, but now she didn’t even want to.

While the boys helped each other drink, Madam Nell said something about where people came from and mingling and wellsprings, and something else about mead, but Lily tuned out a bit.  It was the first quiet moment she’d had in a while, and she needed to check the baby.  It wasn’t that he’d been out for longer than you might expect someone to be under a standard sleeping spell—even a silent one, when it had been Dumbledore doing the casting.  But normally people did their sleeping under rather quieter circumstances.

Harry was perfectly content, though.  He’d dribbled down her front rather a lot, and now he had his thumb in his mouth.  Her shirt was baby-proofed, though, and even though Tuney and even her mum would have gasped in horror about letting a baby suck his thumb, all the wizards she knew had been totally uncomprehending when she’d asked where she could get a dummy. She’d gotten her hands on some in the end, of course, but the wizarding world had drawn a collective blank.  She thought it might have something to do with the respective costs of teeth charms and dentistry.

When she’d finished checking him, and boosting him up for a kiss-over to make herself feel better and give him good dreams, the boys were feeding each other slices of apple and what looked like either acorns or, hopefully, hazelnuts.  The food looked a bit drippy, in a honey sort of way, and there was an argument with lots of grinning from Evan about whether or not they were going to lick each other’s fingers in public before Severus did an accio on the quaich and used it as a washing-vessel.  (Evan pouted.)

Then, to Lily’s surprise, they both turned to Blakeney.  They didn’t go so far as to look at her, though, instead exchanging eye-talk of the you-no-you-no-you variety. Evan must have won, because it was Sev who addressed her, very formally.

He said, “We come to you, Peregrine, soul of potential, and pray the gift of the Rock Dove’s Flight.”

“What do you ask?” Blakeney asked, a bit unsteadily.

Evan pulled a box out of Sev’s mantle (which, Lily supposed, explained why he cared if it was damaged), and opened it.  Sev pulled out a pale grey ribbon, and held it out between his hands.  Evan said, “The homing pigeon can always fly to her own nest.  Let us be able to call, and to come when called, and to call out ‘let me come,’ and to say ‘Here I am, come home,’ and if we both agree, let one come home.”

Blakeney nodded very fast, and put her wand and other hand on the ribbon.  

Madam Nell put out a hand and stopped her.  “Do you have words for these, Severin?  For the coming, and for the welcoming?  You know that they must be words not often said, I think, so that the other will not be alarmed, or come at a mistaken time?”

Sev nodded, and said, “‘Lighthouse silver’ for the beacon—or the welcomer, as you prefer,” he added tolerantly to Evan, who nodded in what might have been an attempt at sternness. It did, at least, succeed at being moderately firm, or at least buoyed with casual conviction.

Sev rolled his eyes tolerantly and went on, “‘Salmon owl’ for the one who’ll move.”

“Salmon owl, darling?” Black asked dubiously.

“It makes sense to _me,_ ” Severus scowled.  “Owls know where they’re going.  Salmon are always coming home.  And then there’s the Salmon’s Leap, which most likely _was_ short-range apparition.”

“Okay,” Lily told him kindly, “you _were_ making sense up until that last one.”

“We’d been reading about the apples-and-hazelnuts-and-honey bit,” Evan explained, “and he went off on a side-track about the hazelnuts and then we were reading about Ceridwen and Fionn and Kooky-kill—er, you know the one, and all that sort of thing for three days.   _You_ know how he gets.”

When Madam Nell had nodded at her in satisfaction (Sev was still looking at Evan in pain over what Lily thought _might_ have been his attempt at Cuchulain), Blakeney said, “Here I stand, a maiden and a student, to say, in the name of Brigid, be blessed.”

It turned out that the ribbon was embroidered in white runes, because they started to shine and didn’t stop.

They glanced at each other, and instead of turning to Lily as she’d expected, or even Madam Nell, they went to stand in front of Mrs. Prince, who looked astonished.  This time it was Evan who said, “We come to you, Julilla, soul of the Wheel, and pray the gift of the Cavern Echo.”

Black and Blakeney both made a noise. They might have denied that it was an _awwwww_ noise, but it definitely was.

Mrs. Prince also looked distinctly melty, and it was clear that she only asked, “What do you ask?” as a formality.

When it was clear that Severus was capable of holding out a ribbon of crimson velvet but not of saying anything, Evan said, “Severus is being very selfish and saying he’s being nice to me.  He wants to feel my pulse in his body, but he says I shouldn’t feel his because it won’t have the same kind of calming effect mine will have on me and could possibly give me ulcers or even a heart attack.”

“I didn’t say ‘could possibly,’” Severus corrected, “I said ‘would.’  My adrenaline goes off fifty times a day _without_ living amongst children or supervising any classes.  I see no reason for it to do to your digestion and nerves what it’s already done to my own. Your body isn’t even habituated.”

Evan sighed heavily and made a there-you-have-it gesture.

Mrs. Prince dimpled, a bit timidly, touched the ribbon in the same way, and said, “Here I stand, an exile and a seeker-of-paths, to say, in the name of Brittania, be blessed.”

When the embroidery started glowing red, before they could start to turn away, she called, “Severus?”  They paused, and she jerked her chin up with a resolution that suddenly made her eyes look a _lot_ like Sev’s, despite her face.  She reached across the circle and grabbed his wrist.

After a moment—Lily _knew_ his eyebrows were raised—he asked, “Yes?”

She said intently, “Here I stand, a mother and a grandmother and a finder of ways, to say this: there are things I can’t do, and making bequests to anyone named Snape is one of them.  Someone who did a particular thing on a particular day and _doesn’t_ have any legal or magical attachment to that name—” she hesitated.  “Er, and hasn’t killed my husband or anything like that, no offense, I hope, but one can’t be too careful… why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s very funny to him that the only wizarding citizen he knew growing up is the only person in his family who doesn’t have a Slytherin bone in her body,” Evan said, in a rather less chilly and standoffishly-polite tone than he’d favored Mrs. Prince with all day, with a good half a smile.  “Can’t think why, he _knows_ his mum’s Gryffier than all-get-out.  Don’t worry, he wouldn’t even take money you _wanted_ him to take when he really needed it and you tried to sneak it into his bag.   _Come_ on, Spike.”

“Can’t be too careful!” Sev sort of howled quietly.  Lily was extraordinarily sorry that she knew he was thinking that Mrs. Prince hadn’t thought to say any caveats about his friends killing her husband out of solidarity, with or without being explicitly asked to, or anyone at all killing her.  

She was _so_ sorry she knew that.  She also knew he was thinking it because he was a Defense nut, but she _also_ knew that nearly everyone she knew would _expect_ him to think it on the grounds that he was a nasty piece of work.

“Yes, darling, I know,” Black said patiently.  “Now pull yourself together or I’ll kick you again.”

This was not productive.

“Sneak it into his bag?” Mrs. Prince asked—apparently bewildered, but since it had the effect of making Sev’s stifled man-giggles start to taper off, Lily had to wonder, just a little, if she was really as bewildered as all that, or being sneaky to help Evan again.

“Oh, yes,” Evan said long-sufferingly.  “Spike has this earning-things thing.  I’m going to have enough trouble when he realizes he has to use my money, I really don’t think you need to worry about him scheming to hurt anyone for yours.”

“What do you mean, I have to use your money?” Sev asked sharply.

“Well, Spike, there’s this concept known as ‘ours,’ you know.  Family vaults and all.  The goblins are rather more keen on them than on sharing records with the Ministry.  Saves them space, saves wizards fees.  We’ll discuss it later.”

“ _Evan…!”_

Blithely ignoring him, Evan said to his cousin, “We come to you, Narcissa, soul of arrangement, and pray the gift of the Mirror of the Rose.”

Sev growled a little, but he got a hold of himself and pulled out another pale ribbon, this one a glossy, neutral blue-green, like glass or still water. He even managed to show Black a face that wasn’t really too ominous or resentful at all.

“ _Thank_ you,” Black said primly.  “What do you ask?”

“Again,” Sev said, “only when asked, only when welcomed: to see through each other’s eyes.”  He paused, and said, “I’m probably going to regret this, but actually, we agreed, in the interests of fairness, just mine.”

Black frowned.  “I’m not sure this is at all equivalent to feeling one’s pulse, Evvie,” she said.

“We know,” Evan said.  “But having the option would drive Spike _crazy._  He’d want to use it for an escape and be too ethical to let himself, he’d get all paranoid about me being nice to clients and be too ethical to let himself and fly himself absolutely around the _walls_.  Whereas Spike is generally only looking at either books or boring things when he’s not looking at me—” Sev elbowed him, which he seemed to have expected, “—and since I don’t expect to be able to get him to look in a lot of mirrors because he’s ridiculous, we both believe this will stay an emergency measure.”

“Besides,” Sev said smugly, “if he tries to abuse it or apply emotional leverage, I shall now be able to apparate to wherever he is and smack him with a newspaper.”

“If Lucius had even dared to _suggest_ this before our wedding, it would have been _off,_ ” Black told them.  “For at least six months, and only on again if he agreed to the sort of pre-nuptial agreement that would have made his father and his vault manager cry.”

Lily nodded vehemently.

“That’s because Lucius ought to be trusted with it even less than I should,” Sev agreed, charitably ignoring Lily.  “The only reason Evan can is because he’s capable of leaving things alone and my life is incredibly boring.”

“Except when it’s not,” Evan corrected.

“Yes, but you know I dislike when it’s not and am _delighted_ at the idea of a spotter,” Sev explained.  “A particular spotter.  I shouldn’t care for, say, one of the Carrows.”

“Right,” Evan smiled, and cinched his waist tighter.

Black sighed, and lifted her hands in a too-graceful shrug, landing on the ribbon.  “If you’re sure, then.  Did you already weave an activation word in?”

“A gesture,” Sev said, more than a bit smugly.

“Please, you will let me see it,” Madam Nell put in firmly.  “You will not be offended, I hope?  But, you know, this is not such simple runework that it is wrong to say, well, let some second eyes look who are full with many years, yes?”

Sev shrugged, and took the ribbon over to her.  When she smiled, he said, in the same smug tone, “Ev’s a _Magister Memoria._  He’s not some Knockturn sketch-portraitist.”

“And the dye on the ribbons is colorfast and everything,” Evan laughed, knocking shoulders with Sev as he came back.

Black rolled her eyes and said, “Yes, darlings, you’re both brilliant.  If you’re done?”

“Yes, mum,” Evan said, pretending to be chastised.

“Commendations from the NEWT review’s Runes and Arithmancy boards with his Os,” Sev stage-whispered at Blakeney.  “And everyone knows he’s dim and loony, so beat that.”  

Blakeney giggled, but also looked a bit intimidated.  Lily, who’d gotten a couple of those congratulatory letters herself, knew Jamie and Sirius had each gotten one for Transfigs, and was sure Sev had at least two squirrelled away in a drawer pretending he wasn’t fiercely proud of them, resolved to tell her that they weren’t as impossible to come by as all that, if you applied yourself.  

Black gave Sev a look that wasn’t really scolding, but did perfectly convey _you are done now._  “Here I stand, a bride, a sorceress, a matriarch, to say, in the name of Hecate, be blessed.”

Sev put the glassy and now-shiny-pink ribbon back in the box, and they turned to Lily.  He gave her one of his tiny smiles as Evan pulled out a plush, deep purple ribbon, more blue than Black’s hems, and said, “We come to you, Lily, soul of protection, and pray the gift of the Wellspring.”

“What do you ask?” Lily asked curiously.  Up close, she could see the embroidered runes on the ribbon before they started shining—or, at least, she could see the threads, but she couldn’t quite read them.

Evan told her, a bit tersely, “It lets you share.”

“I’m noticing a distinct lack of ritualistic overexplaining,” she remarked.

“When they’re hurt,” he said, not much more elaborately.

“We’re a bit less comfortable with this one,” Sev said drolly, “because we’re under the delusion that it’s somehow slightly plausible that with the indoor painting job who is universally tolerated when not liked and admired is more likely to get hurt.”

“And since hurt people are sometimes unconscious, the spell is _made_ so you don’t need consent, and while ‘we’ don’t think the scenario under discussion is _terribly_ likely _,_ ” Evan glared at him, “what we _do_ think is extremely likely is that if it _should_ happen, _some_ of us are _very_ likely to explore the way the books don’t say what the _limits_ of sharing are.”

“Suck it up,” Sev instructed him.

Evan looked like he would have flung his hands up if he hadn’t been presenting the ribbon in a very formal gesture.  “That’s what I’m afraid of!”

“Is this a failsafe you wish to forego?” He clearly didn’t give, as he would have put it, one single damn whether the answer was yes, no matter how unlikely he said Evan was to get hurt.

Looking altogether too sullen for a tall and handsome blond adult in a peacock-feather waistcoat with a scratched nose, Evan muttered, “Not in a _million years_ , you _maniac_.”

“Well, then.”

Once Evan had sighed and nodded at her, Lily asked uncertainly, “Is there a spell, or do I just touch it like that?”

“You just touch it like that and… you’re activating someone else’s enchantment, it’s that sort of lighting-a-spark will-forcing,” Sev explained.

“Is there a particular name I’m supposed to in-the-name-of?”

“No, my little Lily,” said Madam Nell, “only one for which you have reverence, or respect, who you think, well, I have always put my trust in them, or I feel they watch over me, or I believe we do not too much disagree.  But you will remember the things that I have called you today, yes?”

“Bearing in mind that Cissa didn’t mention being my friend,” Evan stage-whispered, eyeing her to see if she needed more hints.

She nodded an okay at him, and touched the ribbon like everyone else.  “Here I stand,” she said, only a bit uncertainly, “a wife—“ Sev’s eye twitched, but it was true, “—a mother, and a warrior,” which was more than pushing it, she felt, but that was what Madam Nell had called her, at least twice, and she did want to make Sev remember she was a Gryffindor caring about him, even if she couldn’t in conscience talk about Godric like a saint or anything, “to say, in the name of God, be blessed.”

The ribbon, thankfully, started shining immediately, even though she didn’t really know what she was doing. Even though she’d used probably the _only_ name a witch who did know what she was doing here wouldn’t have.  But Sev just nodded reassuringly at her before they turned to Madam Nell.

This ribbon was undyed, and Lily thought it might just have been unembroidered.  It was Sev, who spoke, again, but this time he went down on his knee again.  “We come to you,” he said, “Perenelle, soul of experience, and pray the gift of your wisdom.”

“… _Perenelle?!”_ Lily squeaked.  Black stepped sideways in silence and, in silence, firmly stepped on her foot.

 _CAD!_ Lily’s socks embroidered themselves.  She noticed that through the eye-watering (but thankfully brief) sensation that every bone in her foot had shattered only because she was so stunned by who was standing in front of her that mere agony couldn’t completely capture her concentration anyway.   _THIEF!  DESPOILER OF PURE YOUNG LADIES!  SCOFFLAW!  BARBARIAN!  OIK!  CRIMINALLY RUDE PERSON!_

(When Lily’s brain had reset itself into thoughts that were thoughts, she decided to leave her socks alone.  Telling Jamie that some pureblood prig had stepped on her foot with obviously always-on enchanted shoes while she was out would be perfectly honest, and she could even refuse to tell him who on the grounds that she wasn’t upset and he would completely overreact in such a sweetly horrifying way that she would rather reward him for the impulse without dealing with the consequences.  

Besides, nobody was going to take a mum and her baby seriously as a despoiler of young ladies.  Which rather invalidated the rest of it.  And Remus would think it was funny, and she didn’t want to walk around with one sock and a shoe full of ashes even if Sev did feel like obliging.   _She_ certainly didn’t have fire control that precise.)

Madam _Perenelle!!!_ smiled conspiratorially at Lily, and possibly at Black, and then kindly down at Sev.  “ _Mes petits,_ I have been married to the best of men for oh!  Such a long time, I do not try to remember the years, they will only embarrass me.  There is only one gift too hard to learn in the first short years which are all that too many have in hard times, I think.”

She touched her wand to the undyed, beige-ish ribbon, and it turned a shining gold.  “This is the gift of renewal,” she told them.  “To spend much time together, it is to learn to not to see the things that are done again and again.  To take them for granted, as it is said.  Some things, yes!  We wish to not to see them, we do not wish them to pluck at our nerves, they will not go away and we do not wish to become the fishwife only so the beloved heart will perhaps remember three days out of ten to take off his muddy shoes, no?”

Sev and Evan glanced at each other.  “Teapots?” Evan asked, half sheepish and half with shining innocence.

“I was _born_ a fishwife,” Sev declared, lifting his chin.  Evan very obviously very nearly failed not to snort.

Madam Nell— _Perenelle!—_ succeeded better.  “So, yes!  Some things we wish the thoughts to pass over.  But when we are young, when the love is new, we think, so!  It will always be this strong feeling, so vivid inside our hearts, how can it be otherwise?  My friends, we are not made that it should always be so.  To see the beloved always with vividness, the eyes must be sometimes refreshed.  So I give you this: the gift of renewal, which will sometimes wash the eyes of your mind in these kind ways, when they are falling sleepy to each other.”

“… _Mea magistra,_ ” Severus eventually breathed. Evan, eyes just as wide, didn’t even manage that.

She smiled, and touched the ribbon.  “Here I stand, an old lady who has seen many born and buried.  In the name of Athena and her little Nike, in the name of Hermes Trismegistus who sprang from the wings of Thoth, be blessed.”

Lily thought that was going to be the be-all, if not the end end-all, barring maybe some nonsense with the pole.  It looked like everyone else did, too—or, nearly everyone.  Black looked depressed and headachy under her haughty patrician nose-in-the-air thing.

But then, Madam Nell held up her hand to draw Sev to his feet, and asked, “Well, then, although perhaps it is late to ask with these ribbons in your hands, is it that you will have the handfastings of bone, of breath, or of blood?”

“Of breath,” Evan said, in an of-course sort of way.

“Of blood,” said Sev, shoulders going nervous and defiant under his blasé face.

Evan said, “…Er?”

“And well may you _say_ ‘er,’” Black said crossly, not even pretending to be a refined young lady who would never shoot Severus the stink-eye.

“What happened to ‘with this ring I thee wed’?” asked Lily, nauseated and rather worried.

“That’s the handfasting of bone,” Evan explained, giving Sev a funny look.  “Possibly at one point it was not metaphorical.”

“It’s still not metaphorical; the ring holds fast the bone of the hand by encircling the finger,” Sev said in his ever-so-reasonable tone.  “Obviously I intended us to do breath _too,_ ” he added ‘reassuringly.’

“You’ve just lost any right to complain about challenges,” Evan said, amiably enough.  

“Oh, I have _not._ ”

“Mmmm-mmm.  What’ve you done, Spike?”

Sev with the blank face that meant he was feeling edgy and might spook if you poked him, pulled red glass swan out of some pocket.

“…You _conned_ me into making that!” Evan accused, delightedly suspicious.

“You _did_ need a distraction,” Sev said loftily.  He opened it, and touched Evan’s sleeve with his wand.  Softly, “May I?”

“You probably should, darling,” Black called, “but do be sure you kick him up and down the local Main Street for me later, will you? No—make it Hallow Way, so all his Northern friends will ask why.  The _wretch_ put his heart’s blood into that, and all he needed was a thumb’s prick.”

“Spike, you idiot,” Evan said softly, and stood still to have his sleeve cut off.  He had a tattoo of two trees twined together taking up most of his forearm, grown together over a hearth full of green and silver fire.  Lily wasn’t close enough for detail, but she thought it had a bit of an impressionistic look.  Severus hesitated, and Evan pressed, “Hurry _up._  You get my pulse, it’s not _fair_!”

That startled half a laugh out of Severus. He hesitated, raised Evan’s arm up to kiss the picture of the hearth, and pressed something from out of the red swan into that same place.

Evan’s eyes shot open as the tree’s leaves exploded all over his arm and the fire blazed huge.  It all subsided when Sev jumped back, but the fire kept flickering and the leaves stirred in a way that matched the breeze Lily felt.  Evan grinned at Sev—

—and then raised his eyebrows, because Sev was, very unhappily, taking off his shirt.  He had a vest under, but that would barely matter to Sev.

Or maybe Evan was raising his eyebrows because he, like Lily, had never seen the criss-cross pattern that looked like wood. It wrapped up and down his arms and over his shoulders and under his wand-sheath, ending wrapped like bracers at his elbows.  He offered Evan his wrist, where there was a pink spot about the size of a wand-tip, and shook something out of the red swan into Evan’s palm.

“Spike,” Evan said shakily, reaching out to touch the pattern.  “Spike, is that—”

“ _Yes of course it is what else would it be will you please look you can yell at me later just I would like to put my shirt back on in front of_ PEOPLE _do you mind._ ”

“I’m not going to yell at you,” Evan murmured, now openly caressing Sev’s upper arms, his face unwatchably open and rapt.  The arms in question were acceptably wiry, Lily supposed, jerking scorched eyes respectfully away from Evan’s solemn captivation, if you liked your boys skinny.  “Here?”

And then, just like the leaves, Sev’s arms exploded in—no, not green snakes.  The inked vines grew up from his wrist, taking hold at the bracer. The snakey lower vines faded away, and new ones started to bloom through the wooden diamond-slats. Up, up, all the way across his shoulders, his neck, down to his other elbow, budding and blossoming until the grid—the trellis—was invisible under the leaves and roses.  Red and white ones, glowingly silvery-blue-white ones, royal blue ones, black ones with shell-pale veins coming up from their hearts, giant shimmery pink ones like peonies.

“Viviane du Lac,” Evan whispered. his face gone completely wobbly, brushing one of the big pink ones. It shivered.  His tree had taken over his arm again. “Spike. Trellis. _Severus.”_

“Got you,” Sev told him, just as quiet but fierce, cupping his face.

“Ok,” Evan gulped.  “Got _you._  Ok.”  Getting control of himself, he aimed a cockier smile at Sev and said, “Sorry I laughed at the possibility of self-destructive romantic gestures.”

“Gah,” Sev uttered, and shoved him dramatically away.  All the roses and even the wood-pattern faded.  Completely.  Only the taciturn, elegant knotwork of the bracers brushing his elbows was left, and even that was only the subtlest of shadows against his skin.

Evan stared at him.

“It’s not for _other people,_ ” Sev spelled out in his talking-to-idiots slow voice, annoyed, his arms crossed and one thumb stroking the pale remains of the knotwork.  Lily would have bet sickles to scones he didn’t know he was doing it.

“Oh, sweet Salazar,” Evan said, starting to laugh in a way that had turned nearly hysterical almost before he’d finished talking, “the roses are sub rosa.  Spike, you are _awful._ ”

Spike turned his substantial nose up and reminded him, “Teapots.  Are you going to move the s—the stupid pole, or am I?”

“I think you’d better,” Evan wheezed, sitting down.

Sev made a _tcha_ noise, and did what looked to Lily like a carefully plotted-out Banishing charm—the same kind that got one’s laundry into the hamper, only on a rather larger scale.  When he was done, the pole was in the center of the sand-pit.  He tugged on it, and when it didn’t move too much he swarmed up to the top.

“Mine wasn’t like this,” Lily commented to Black, wondering who had bespelled Sev to forget he’d left his shirt off.  In a crowd like this, she wasn’t even betting on Evan, even if he _was_ the only one in the ring with Sev.  “Was yours like this?”

“Oh, _Merlin,_ no,” Black shuddered.  “Only five guests?  Mama would never have forgiven me.  Evvie’s mum will never forgive _him,_ I daresay.  And to be _quite_ honest, this is a bit more traditional than most people find necessary these days. Severus always does think he has something to prove, although goodness knows to whom, since he only behaves that way when no one he _ought_ to make an effort for is watching, and what can you do with an artist, really.”

What Sev could do with an artist, apparently, was shout at him to float the box of ribbons up to the top of the pole so Sev wouldn’t hit himself in the face (read: in the nose, Lily heard everyone she’d ever met thinking) with an accio.

Black was saying with distaste, as Sev tied the ribbons up there  through some complicated arrangement of rings Lily hadn’t noticed from below, that left the ribbons woven loosely enough to sag before they dropped,, “I suppose you had yours in some muggle ‘church’?”

“We did, as a matter of fact,” Lily said placidly.  “Jamie said if that made my mum happy he didn’t mind, as long as they could get some things in to make his mum happy and it all ended in rings.”

“Was that what you wanted?” Black asked, with the first spark of real curiosity about Lily that Lily remembered noticing in her.

Lily raised a wry eyebrow.  “Since when were weddings about what anybody but the mums want?” And where was Ms. Ellie, anyway? It must have been selfish of Sev to leave her out, and Evan’s mum, because it couldn’t have been thoughtless. Unless they didn’t know at all, in which case, times a _million._ “I’ll get to think about what I want when this one’s old enough.”  She petted Harry’s cheek.

“Hmm.”

Lily didn’t know if that was a good hmm or a bad hmm, but then again, she didn’t much care.  And not just because she didn’t actually care, but because the same ribbon she’d touched had come rolling down the pole, far longer than it had been before, to land with the untied tip at her feet.

“Lance!” Sev yelled sharply.  “O Captain, my Captain, get your lazy arse up here before I shoot a snitch through your ears.”

“You are _too high,_ we don’t have brooms,” Evan yelled back sharply.  “And if you brought a snitch to _this_ pitch I am having your head examined.”

“I’m high enough to grab the lip of the cave if the pole’s not sturdy enough,” Sev said impatiently.  Lily genuinely couldn’t tell whether his magnificent ignoring of the return threat meant he did or did not have a hexed attack-snitch tucked away somewhere, Just In Case.  “It’s safest highest.  Move!”

“What?” asked Lily, becoming aware of unmalicious but very _weighty_ eyes on the side of her head.

“You _have_ done a Maypole before, haven’t you, Miss?” asked Blakeney dubiously.

Lily sighed.  “I _was_ Head Girl, you know.”

“This isn’t the same steps as at Beltane, though,” said Blakeney, remembering to pretend to be timid again.

Lily pointed at her.  “Don’t bother, kid, I’m onto you now.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“I will call the steps,” Madam Nell said firmly.  “Are you ready, my friends up there?”

“Yes?” said Evan, in a voice that meant no, absolutely not, in no way, not this week try again next year.

Madam Nell put her wand to the flower ring, and cast, “ _Geminus._ ”  The flowers swarmed inward, until they’d piled high against the pole.  “Have you all your ribbons in hand?”

Lily heard two voices cast _wingardium leviosa,_ and only the profound desire not to kill anyone (and the lesser desire not to wake the baby) stopped her screaming as she saw the boys floating above, not exactly rock-steady, their wands pointed at each other, clasping their other hands on the top of the pole with their arms twined into the slack weaving Sev had made up there, pulling it tight.

“This is _unutterably_ stupid,” Lily breathed.  “And I say that as a _Gryffindor._ As one Griffindor in a cave with _four Slytherins._ ”

“But it’s so beautiful,” protested the Hufflepuff, smiling shiningly up at her grandson.

Tightening her free arm around Harry, Lily said, “That’s no excuse!”

“It gets stupider,” Blakeney assured Lily, grinning a little.  “Wizards who aren’t good at charms usually go for the rings.”

Lily didn’t bother answering that.  She was more than good enough at Charms to make Professor Flitwick happy and impress Sev, and Jamie was more than fine, too, and there was no way she would have floated over everybody in her wedding dress.   _None._

No sooner had they started floating but Madam Nell set the flower pile on fire.  Really a _lot_ on fire.  And then she started very calmly calling the steps of the pole dance.

She was in no hurry whatsoever.

Clearly in no hurry.

Lily didn’t know about anybody else, but she was sweating and not very happy about the herbal smoke situation, even holding a fold of the sling-shirt over Harry’s mouth and nose with her free hand, wetted with a dash of water from the completely unemptied quaich the moment she passed it, and she didn’t think this ‘breath handfasting’ was clever _at all_.

Finally, the pole was wrapped, and at a nod from Madam Nell, Mrs. Prince and Blakeney each took a handle of the quaich and they tossed it over the really quite large bonfire.  This shouldn’t have worked, but it did.  Not only did the fire go out, but all the leftover flowers and ashes just melted away, leaving a pool of glass where the sandpit had been.

“Come and tie it off, _mes petites,_ ” Madam Nell said, and when they had, the ribbons just _vanished._

Sev and Evan carefully lowered each other.  As they came into earshot, Lily heard Sev saying, “That’s it, right?  We can go to home-enough-for-the-moment now?  I’m sure I have smoke residue in my _ears_.  Which means it must be completely throughout your hair.  I dictate a two-hour bath, are you going to argue with me?”

“Not a whit. I’m just choosing the bath salts, the food, and the wine,” Evan said agreeably.  “None of which you will be spending time tonight making. And you’re not spending all night scratched up and sunburned or whatever in Merlin’s name that is, either, no matter _how_ pleased you are about it.  You may pick the book.”

“You are out of your mind,” Sev growled warmly, executing a successful tug-in.

“I _like_ starting with books,” Evan protested, grinning down at him.

“…Oh.  Well.  All right.  But none of your damned rakia.”

Lily marched over, hugged Evan briefly, and then squeezed Sev until his skinny ribs made a noise.  Then she smacked him, although not hard enough to hurt, and just on the arm.  “ _That’s_ for your mum,” she told him.

“She would have felt obliged to tell Da, and I didn’t want to make him start drinking again,” Sev explained.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. For her money, he’d just tried to imagine kissing someone in front of his mum, or being ceremonious in front of her, and shrivelled into a little pile of blanched humiliation.  Everyone was a coward about their own mum sometimes, though, and Sev’s was not the crying-at-weddings sort. She had to admit she wouldn’t have wanted to risk one of Ms. Ellie’s debriefings after hers, either, and had only felt safe inviting her because she and Jamie had gone _away_ after, and shehadn’t had to risk anything on Snapean notions of How One Behaves As A Guest.  

Sev gave her the little dismissive smirk he used instead of admitting he was ashamed of himself like a normal person, then peered at her seriously. “I don’t want _anyone_ told, Lils,” he said intently. “Too much trouble of all sorts follows me to let Evan’s name be attached to mine until the national situation’s less fraught. Until he’d only have to be bothered with the sillier sorts.” His gaze wasn’t exactly menacing, but it was piercingly intent. “I won’t have it. I can’t risk it.”

“You’re _not_ obliviating me, Severus Snape,” she accused, putting her hand in closer proximity to her wand but not backing away yet. She didn’t _really_ think he meant to, but you never could quite tell with Sev.

“No, but I will have to put a silence geas on,” he said holding out his hand implacably, and writing a runic sentence into her palm with his wand once she’d sighed and turned it to him.  “You knew I would,” he informed her, a bit teasing now he’d gotten his way even though he clearly meant what he was saying. “You couldn’t even keep a bonehead like James Potter from getting suspicious when you were properly afraid about it.”  

She scowled at him, but let that pass today.  “I don’t know why, though.”

“Call me as paranoid as you like—”

“I will,” she and Evan chorused.

“—I _do not want_ the Ministry knowing more than they need to know about… anything.  Even before what you told me, I am not comfortable about them Lils.  Something is _rotten,_ and Denmark is not far enough away.”

She sighed.  “You _are_ a nutter, but fine.  Sev?  If it’s too personal…”

He raised dubious eyebrows at her.

“I understand the Tudor rose—”

“The _English_ rose,” he scowled inaccurately.  “Red and white is the rose of joined families.  I have the Plantagenet one—that is, the York one—look.”

Every history class she’d ever taken told her he was completely delusional, but she supposed everyone was allowed to be delusional about their own family history.  “—And I know blue roses mean magic,” although to muggles they more usually meant folly, although she wasn’t going to mention _that,_ “and I could see the pink one meant something to Evan—”

“Blue roses are also the sigil of his House,” Sev told her.

“ _Whose_ House?” Evan demanded.

“I don’t think we can settle that one, at least legally, let alone overtly, until things have sorted themselves out in Britain, Ev.  I’m game to file papers in a Swiss bank for a House Schwartzrosiger next time we’re at IAMB, if you like.”

“Fürstrosiger,” Evan proposed.  “Rosenkönig.”

“ _I unequivocally refuse to be named Prince Rose.”_

“Well, but Spike, as a surname it would be more like The Rose Prin—”

_“That’s not better.”_

Instead of making a creeling bird noise out of crushed-adorable-overwhelmedness and hugging them, like she would any _normal_ couple, “...I’d say something about lilac, what with all the the red, white and blue flowers, but Lockhart was in _your_ House, poor boy.”

“Poor me indeed,” Sev said solemnly, and Evan grinned in a clearly restrained snicker.

She crossed her eyes at them.  “But the black and white ones?”

Sev touched one, carefully.  “I don’t consider myself capricious,” he said at last.  “But I was born under Janus as well as the goat, and him I understand a little, I think.  Enough to know that there’s nothing simple about looking in two directions at once, and nothing straightforward about black and white, and to have two faces is nothing like so uncomplicated as to be divided down the middle.”

Lily felt deeply uneasy, but her instant, urgent, childish desire to remind him he was supposed to be on her side had an easy, easy answer, springing immediately to the front of her mind the moment she thought about ‘sides’ at all.  “I… think I see?  Oh, but Sev, before I take Blakeney home, Dumbledore wanted me to give you something.  You’re not to unshrink it, er, until it’s where it ought to stay, I think he said.”  She dug out the packet and handed it over.

He and Evan looked it over curiously, and looked at each other.  “Did he say not to open it?” Evan asked.

“No, just not to unshrink it.”

After a few moments of tugging unsuccessfully on the string and then trying to cut it with a penknife, Evan made a frustrated noise, and said, “It must be enchanted.  Here, I’ll just— _finite Dumbledore incantatum.”_

She felt the spell wash over her, and groaned.  “Oh, _thanks._ ”

“What? I limited it,” Evan said defensively, cutting the string more successfully.  “—Oi, Spike!”

“Yes, he said he was going to,” Sev said calmly, looking at the miniature wardrobe.  “Common practice among the staff, apparently.”

“It’s nice,” Evan said, holding it up to admire some detail Lily hadn’t noticed.

“’ _What,’_ ” she said, glaring exasperatedly as Harry started to shift on her front, “is: Dumbledore’s the one who put the baby to sleep, and he’s got to go through an apparition and two floos to get home.”

“…Oh,” Evan said, a little sheepishly.  “Oops—hey, Spike, knotwork!”

“He might be slightly high,” Sev said apologetically.  “Depending on the flower combinations.  I did a bubblehead charm, but he didn’t want to try one while floating me.”

Lily rolled her eyes tolerantly, and called, “Can somebody sane take us home?  The baby’s starting to fuss.”  He was, too; twisting and turning an unhappy red.  Lily hoped unhappily that breaking the sleeping charm hadn’t broken some sort of protection against the smoke that was still drifting about.  And that he wasn’t having a bad post-reaction to the sleeping charm, or to having one broken.

“But of course, my little Lily!” Madam Nell came up, smiling.

That was a mistake.

The air seemed to freeze again, in _such a much more horrible way._

“Oh my _god, I am so sorry,_ ” Lily wailed. Amidst the whirl of cleaning charms  and trips to the stream and reassurances and Black being snide, she couldn’t help but be most conscious of Sev sitting down and dropping his face into his hand and, in the worst and hollowest way laughing himself, not to put too fine a point on it, sick.  “Sev, this is _not funny,_ ” she cried, very nearly really crying.

“This is hilarious,” he countered, sounding very nearly like crying himself.  “This is… this is _exactly what I should have expected._ ”

“I’m _sorry!”_

“It’s Lance’s fault,” Blakeney assured her, more practical than reassuring, which was, to someone who’d grown up with Sev, the most reassuring thing possible.  “No, I tell a lie—it’s the Headmaster’s fault.”

But there was Sev, telling a slightly dazed-looking Evan, “Of _course_ at my handfasting my husband gets stoned on the sodding ceremonial bonfire and an infant throws up on the officiant.  Of _course_ my oldest friend’s offspring projectile vomits all over _Perenelle fucking Flamel_.”

“I’ll take you girls back to the inn in Sofia and we’ll floo to Hogsmeade from there,” Mrs. Prince said, suddenly almost firm in their direction, despite her anxious glance back to where Evan was sympathetically patting Severus’s shoulder and trying to pretend he wasn’t doing it solely to watch the flowers bloom and fade.  (She didn’t think he was stoned at _all,_ the sneak.  He hadn’t looked like he was before Sev suggested it)

As Mrs. Prince let the youngest three witches out of the enchanted place under the open sky-window in the cave, the last thing Lily heard was Sev, at his most flatly, melodramatically despairing, declaring, “That boy was _born_ to _make my life a farce._ ”


	28. Melelune (Lyulyak Lodge, Bulgaria)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing about surveillance, however passive or consensual, is: things come to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : more sap than a maple tree.
> 
> Because it was a birthday present for psyche_girl, precious, that's why. ;)

When Severus realized he had woken, his right lung area felt strange and he was being moderately crushed by a moderately hairy ginger giant who was slobbering into his neck.

More properly, one might say it happened like this:

When Severus woke up, it was to the snuffling and belly-growlings of a sweaty body on top of him that smelled like charred herbs. Not to mention a whole host of aches and twinges, the jarring realization that the sun was _far_ too high through the curtains, and the distinct sensation that his heart was playing panicked, sychopated backbeating snares to someone else’s sedated bass drum.

What Severus himself experienced was being jolted awake by the icepick of realization.

Namely: that he needed to send a message to the Embassy _immediately,_ because Karkaroff was going to knock on that door at ten o’clock if no one told him not to, and Severus had been completely unprepared for the conviction that if anyone violated this… this not merely frail but totally illusory bubble of sanctity that was the saturatingly lavish shock of waking to Evan’s skin warmly reassuring against his with the newborn revelation of Evan’s heart resonating in the right-hand hollow of his chest and Ev’s stupid, shiny hair tickling his nose precisely as usual, Severus might blast their throat out.

Which was to say that he was more than half afraid he might _really blast Karkaroff’s throat out._ There was no good reason for that sort of a mess.

Merely the thought of dragging himself away from the bed was horrific. This was disturbing in and of itself; Severus had lived in a room with Evan since he was eleven and shared a bed with him since they were sixteen. Never once had the idea of getting up carefully, dressing quietly, and leaving alone been anything other than part of his morning.

He might take a few moments to bask, or stroke, or even make Evan wake up for a few minutes if he had time to make the interruption to Ev’s sleep-cycle worth his while. But one went to bed, slept, and got up. A warm bed in the sunlight didn’t normally have the same black-hole hold on him that Evan seemed to revel in.

The thought of moving away, even just for long enough to trot down to the lobby and have a note flooed, was enough to make his blood chill, to make him want to crawl inside Ev’s skin and curl up in the quiet spaces between his molecules.

Maybe the rings nonsense wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. One could look at one’s hand, and not get the same sort of questions about Do You Need Medical Attention one would get for clutching one’s chest like the proverbial maiden auntie.

(Severus didn’t know where that turn of phrase had come from. In his experience, no one so marginalized as a spinster could afford to be easily shocked, and an unattached dependent within the family would be under far too much pressure to make herself useful to be sheltered and escape exposure to life, unless she were fortunate enough to become independent and manage life on her own.)

Maybe if he cut off some of Ev’s hair, and braided it very fine? That was traditional, wasn’t it? And Ev had enough of the stuff.

But no, the point was _not_ to have external markers, _not_ to make their attachment first-glance conspicuous. Besides, he was already fortunate enough that Ev had forgiven him for the blood-collection. Collecting anything else while Ev was sleeping would be to start a very creepy habit out of a one-off necessity.

He sighed. Clutching every scrap of personal discipline he’d ever built, he eased himself away from the only place of warmth or meaning he could imagine, even though it clutched at him in its sleep and whined sleepy protest.

He bent down to press a kiss and a soft, “I’ll return momentarily,” into Ev’s temple—and smiled: even sleeping, this seemed to confuse his friend who knew him, knew his habits. Just for a moment, and then Evan’s dream moved on.

It was astonishing how cold he felt in the corridor, even in a shirt and trousers and dressing gown. It was less astonishing but something of a problem how drawn his hand was to that slow roll that was new in him, was only technically on the wrong side of his chest. _A droit._

One of the things that he’d miss about Bulgaria, noted the part of his mind that ticked on regardless (except during the scorching seconds under the cruciatus, the lack of exposure to which was another thing he’d miss), was that no one expected you to walk about beaming affably. It was considered not only civil but quite friendly enough to be getting on with to nod at whomsoever one passed, without smiling. Smiling without pressing cause was for lackwits. Severus entirely approved.

One was not put into the position of forcing cheer and fellowship regardless of one’s mood or relationship with the passerby on pain of damaging one’s reputation and getting scolded by Narcissa. One could look as impatient as one felt, and move as quickly as one liked, and no one took it personally. One wasn’t unpleasant; one had things to do and was therefore quite likely to be in demand and competent, if not actually important.

If he hadn’t been ablaze to get back to Evan—and if his feet hadn’t been very nearly _literally_ on fire with itching because he’d been in too much of a hurry to put on proper shoes or remember to move his soothing, vampire-infuriating sole-pads of British clay into his slippers, damn it—he would have savored the freedom as blissful.

By the time he got to the desk, the second pulse-rate had started to change its tempo. He gathered, with a private smile that he neither allowed onto his face nor bothered to label as smug, tender, delighted, stalkerish, or anything else, that Ev had woken up. When the pulse went quick and startled and then dropped to a beat nearly as slow and dragging as Ev’s sleeping rate, it was Severus’s own heart that skipped, even though he told himself that assigning disappointment to a drumbeat was nonsensical. He would have liked to be back before Ev had had to wake alone on this particular morning, very much so, but Ev usually did wake alone, and was certainly accustomed to it.

Nonsensical or not, he hurried back from sending his message almost as quickly as he’d gone—and then, when Ev’s pulse started pounding and jumping about in a way that could not _possibly_ have meant he was having a mopey wank, Severus started moving a hell of a lot faster.

When he got to their door and heard banging and crashing behind it, he slammed it with a silent _alohomora,_ threw up a _protego,_ and dove in.

It was a good thing he _had_ thrown up that protego, too, because otherwise the first thing that happened would have been the vicious removal of his face. When he could focus his eyes again through the adrenaline and look _at_ the source of the bristling lightning-swift swipe the circumference of his leg, as opposed to just where it was and how it was moving, he saw the same damn kind of terrifying thorny monster-vine that had nearly shredded him yesterday.

It was also the same kind of terrifying thorny monster-vine that had swarmed out of Ev’s skin to help Ev yell at Gamp about whether Severus was allowed to hurt himself after their first Quidditch game together, but that was quite beside the point, at the moment.

This vine stopped attacking instantly, however. Evan said, “Er. Um. Hi, Spike. Um. I thought you’d gone for the morning.”

“Are you _mental?”_ Severus demanded, staring at him. It wasn’t entirely out of disbelief at the stupidity of the remark. Ev was wearing a… a… Narcissa or Luke would have known whether to call it a chiton or a tunic or even a toga; fashion was not Severus’s focus when he was reading history; but it stopped at his knees and the tree tattoo on his arm was on full display. Not in full leaf and flame, as it would have been if Severus had been touching him (an omission which needed to be rectified instantly), but fully visible, as was the _vast_ majority of his skin.

Maybe not really. But far more than usually was, apart from in the obvious moments. Including his feet. He had bare feet, with all his toes out and his sensitive arches also on full display. Something, presumably a thorn, had scratched one of them. Severus was going to set it (the thorn-bearer, not the foot) on fire until it _died screaming plant-screams._

More to the point, the vines, this time, weren’t growing out of Ev’s body, but had crawled all around the room from out of one of the glass bottles Severus _knew_ Ev had blown himself, and they had clearly been attacking him enthusiastically until Severus had barged in.

At which point they had stopped.

Severus was under no illusions about the breadth of his vocabulary, which was why it was especially irksome that it had, at the moment fizzled down to the single demand: _What._

“Probably?” Ev weakly answered the question he’d asked out loud, and asked, rather plaintively, “Is something wrong? I thought you’d gone for the day.” The vines started un-growing back into their bottle. It went rather quickly, once it had begun.

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!” Severus (he sadly acknowledged with his ticking-on mind) shrieked, slamming the door and locking it with a flick of his wand before putting the thing away. He barely noticed his feet, currently more sensible than himself, stepping sockless into his unlaced boots as he stepped away from the swing of the wood.

He did notice Evan glancing down with his oh-good-you’re-taking-care-of-yourself-without-nagging amused look, but he pretended he hadn’t. Full to the eyes with the roiling, pressurized, overwrought reaction to shock that he’d long since trained himself to feel as angry indignation, he couldn’t devote attention to inconsequentials like that. “I went to floo Karkaroff to stay away unless we called for him! And then,” he finally did let his hand fly where it wanted to go, “your heart-rate started doing _Wronski Feints!_ And there was _crashing!_ I thought you were being _attacked!”_

“Well, I was shadowboxing,” Evan admitted, with a face that belonged on the most ovine of sheep before it went shy and Ev sort of swayed a step or two towards him. “I probably should have warned you about that when we were talking about the pulse thing, only I didn’t think of it—you told the bug-eater not to come, Spike?”

“If you have an opponent, it isn’t shadowboxing,” Severus said, and only a lifetime of yelling at people when he was unbalanced kept his voice from wobbling. It was probably out of relief as the itch in his feet faded, and certainly wasn’t due to any looks of growing surprise or pleasure in soft, hopeful eyes. “You should have warned me about that _then?_ That was _weeks_ ago. How long have you been doing this?!”

Evan went sheep-faced again. “Erm… since about three weeks after you started cooking for us? _Spike._ ” He lunged over and grabbed Severus’s arm, dragging him over to the hotel’s wretchedly inadequate sofa, into his arms and his lap.

“Since we moved in together,” Severus said flatly, even as his treacherous hands struck at Evan’s arms like hungry snakes, slid up his neck and pulled him tight enough that Severus could smell sweat and bed and the ghosts of Ev’s proper soap under the stronger ghosts of burned flowers and smoke that they hadn’t been able to completely wash off last night.

Back at school, Wilkes had liked to talk about people having their own smells that weren’t soap. She’d certainly had her own, and Severus hadn’t gone tense when it was Lily walking up behind him, which was better evidence in favor of Wilkes’s premise than any preponderance of opinion, as far as he was concerned. And if he had tensed when Narcissa or Regulus approached unseen, it wasn’t out of fear so much as the certainty of having something asked of him which might or might not be reasonable.

He didn’t consider that Evan had a smell, though, results of exertion aside, no more than one did oneself. It was the air away from him that had something wrong with it. For example: until Ev had folded him up and began stroking his back and his trembling started to wear off, he hadn’t noticed he’d been shaking at all.

“Since you started working?” Ev corrected, rubbing his cheekbone into Severus’s eyebrow as he stroked. “Or, you could also say,” and now the sheep-face had migrated to his voice, “since I started noticing that you like to cook for me like I’m still on a competitive Quidditch team and, er, I’m not.”

Severus pulled away just away to look at him. Sheep-face on the long, gilt-tanned wedge of those strong bones, and just the first hint of smile-lines digging around his eyes as his embarrassment displayed them. Severus was going to get to watch until the habits of good nature painted them in around clear pools as indelibly as rays in a child’s drawing of the sun. He could (glumly) imagine what his own face might look like by then, but he didn’t know what it was doing now.

“Sorry, Spike,” Evan told him, clearly feeling back on firmer ground now as he nuzzled between Severus’s eyes. “I know you like to imagine I spend all my spare time lazing in a sunbeam or whatnot, but I do really like to try harder than that to be ready to have your back.”

“I _do_ like to think about you lying in sunbeams,” Severus confessed. If his voice had gone just a bit unsteady now, wasn’t that all right? “When Patil was whinging on about the records that oughtn’t to matter at that hour of the morning, or Lovegood had one of her more brain-bending ideas, and I hadn’t had enough coffee yet to think about how to tell them to stuff it without making them quit. It was… good. Thinking you were sleeping. Warm.”

“Spike,” Evan breathed, hot against him. Severus was so dizzied by the mouth at his throat that he didn’t realize Ev had banished all his clothes but the dressing gown until its thick tie was undone and broad hands were sizzling up his stomach.

“I don’t understand why you were right,” he heard wrenched out of him, not even in the complaining voice he would have wished, when he was so lost in the sweet wrenching lightning-and-velvet of enfoldment that he didn’t know whose hands were whose and certainly didn’t care what sort of thing they were doing or how simple and adolescent it was.

Evan found nothing to say at the time that didn’t sound like either crying or one of the nonsense phrases he liked to use because (Severus supposed) he considered Severus’s name either too long or too formal for certain occasions.

Later, though, when they’d physically finished shaking and crushing into each other but Severus was wondering if he’d ever remember what it felt like to be stable and sure and cool in himself (and also wondering if he ought to curse Perenelle just a bit for her astonishing fairy-godmother gift, because he’d felt like this with Ev a few times as a teenager, and the doubt, the fear, the feeling of being skinless on a hot and cloudless day under a magnifying glass with only one distantly curious green-blue eye between him and the sizzling sun—that vulnerability had been quite real and not one of the few things that had made those years bearable), it turned out he had heard.

“What did you mean,” he asked lazily, carding through Severus’s hair as though it weren’t a tangled impossibility, “you don’t understand why I was right?”

Although Severus really hadn’t wanted to explain _at all,_ Evan was horribly patient, and if he laughed it wouldn’t be _at_ Severus. Or, at least, not with cruelty. Smugness, quite possibly, but not cruelty.

With a sigh, Severus forced himself to explain as much as he could bear to. It wasn’t very much, but everyone knowing Ev was dim and loony, as Severus had told Blakeney, only meant that Ev not only was clever enough to value being underestimated, but had enough canny perseverance to preserve his advantage in a long game. There was no point in holding back willfully, not with the most bullheaded Taurus to ever chew daisies and make long-lashed cow eyes at all his red-cloaked prospective enemies.

He said, reluctantly, “You said… you said it wouldn’t be redundant.” And then, disgustingly, he couldn’t quite bring himself to hit Evan for the long smile he could feel broadening against his forehead. Even though it would only make things worse, he admitted, “I got up to send the note because if Karkaroff had walked in I knew I’d splatter the splinters of his spine against the hall wallpaper, close the door, and get back in bed with you. It doesn’t make _sense_. We’ve lived together since we were eleven. I’ve considered us wed nearly since we left school. I already trusted in that before we did all of the ritual things.”

“But not ‘nearly since we left school,’” Ev noted drolly.

“Hypotheses need proving,” Severus reminded him. It was both gratifying and a horrific ramping-up of the magnifying-glass feeling to see Evan instantly understand the risk Severus had just admitted to, to see his wry face melt away. Severus hurried on. “It was all terribly dramatic, yes, but nothing’s _changed._ ”

“Apart from some extremely fundamental, not to say _primal_ magic,” Ev suggested, in something of a holding-back voice that didn’t sound as amused as Severus had expected, but also didn’t seem angry, or even annoyed.

“Yes, but we knew I was yours, you mine, and we ours two days and two weeks ago. I don’t recall any spells taking place yesterday or last night that ought to have made me confuse you with bloody oxygen or relocate my perception of gravity, and I think I should like to register a complaint.”

When, thoroughly disgruntled with himself, he dared to look at Evan again, Ev wasn’t laughing. He was very nearly in public-face, with that tilt to his head, except that his irises were barely a millimeter of green around pupils at least half the size of knuts. “Well,” Evan said thoughtfully, “this isn’t terribly like you, so I probably oughtn’t to rely on it happening again and take full advantage. They do say ‘take advantage however you can,’ you know.”

“What do you mean?” Severus asked suspiciously.

“I mean I might be capable of giving you up to, oh, five minutes, but more likely two, to prepare yourself for the sort of day that you, my nose-grinding worker bee, cannot normally tolerate without fretting yourself silly. At which point _I_ will get back in bed with _you._ ”

Eying him even more suspiciously, Severus demanded, “What is it you want, exactly?”

“Oh, I’m not making _requests,_ ” Evan assured him, giving him a comfortable squeeze, and then a comfortable squeeze rather lower. “Whatever strikes your fancy will be _lovely._ I might _suggest,_ though, that for a proper morning in you might like to have some Amberella handy? It’s not quite the sort of endurance match we usually do.”

“No bludgers,” Severus half agreed and half warned. As much as he enjoyed one-one-one Quidditch, its place was outside, where there was room for it and no damage deposit to be considered. He’d known you could never quite tell with Evan _before_ he was disillusioned on the subject of two-hour-long daily morning naps.

“Er, per se,” Evan mostly-agreed, his mouth twitching. “Come to think about it, though, if you do decide on, er, no bludgers, at any point, keep the dressing gown on, will you? I’d quite like to see that, I think.” He sulked playfully at Severus, adding, “I shan’t ask to paint it just now.”

Severus pushed himself up on Evan’s shoulder. Perhaps belatedly, because it was certainly for no good reason he could think of, he felt rather blindsided as he stared down. Down at Evan and his rioting red-gold tangles and his outrageous (though, perhaps, not quite so unfair as Severus had previously supposed) secret-sneaked-in-morning-training muscles, and the sparse, bright little glints interrupting them, the keeping of which Severus never had quite seen the point of when Evan was rather more meticulous about removing his facial hair than Severus would have preferred, and his damp self-training outfit he’d probably made out of a bedsheet.

Unless it was a piece of clothing he’d had commissioned and had in fact secretly owned for years and kept secreted under his pants (clearly not in his socks-and-hose drawer, because Severus was always matching a laundered sock for him with one that was mysteriously stretched out on the floor somewhere) because he apparently _did this every morning._

Just like all the other idiots at school who’d been embarrassed by their own fundamental merits. The pretty, popularity-obsessed twitterpates who’d tried to do all their revising in secret, so as to get good marks without looking like swots. Who didn’t understand or couldn’t face that the ones whose opinions mattered to their futures, and whose opinions were worth having, valued studiousness and commitment and theory-backing-substance-fleshing-out-style, valued effortless suavity and facile fact-spewing not one whit.

Except that Evan did understand. He understood, and played them like gobstones and go.

“Always,” Severus didn’t even hear himself say. He only felt his mouth move, and the awe moving through it.

Evan frowned. “Sorry, Spike?”

Forcing his mouth into a smirk and cocking an eyebrow, Severus told him, “All of the ways. I shall have you in all of them.” Then he hopped off in a blue swirl of dressing gown and did not run but stalked for the bedroom door, closing it behind him to a cloud of happy cursing that, because Evan was ridiculous and inhuman, never quite managed to lower itself to the level of profanity.


	29. Nurmengard, Bulgaria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy and Occam visit an old friend. Well, someone's old friend. Someone old, anyway. And then Severus goes back to school. Yay, home. Look how excited he is. Whoopee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Body dysmorphia, allusions to ptsd. Bigotry language. Leftover maple syrup.
> 
>  **Notes** : Obviously subscriptions and bookmarks are as gratifying as kudos to me personally and almost as gratifying as reviews, and I would love them myself for their own sake. But I'm _recommending_ anyone who wants to know when the next update will be to follow the series.

Their last day in Bulgaria found Evan staring up, rather dauntedly, at a grey stone castle that would have made Hogwarts feel like a cozy toasting-fire even if Hogwarts’s architects had built it as an identically grandiose Gothic horror.

Although they’d meant to get this out of the way far earlier in their stay, their delay hadn’t all been reluctant procrastination.  Severus was claiming now that one of them must have realized, on some unconscious and intuitive level, that the ritual in the Devetashka caves could potentially make the errand easier, by making them both related to Grindelwald, however distantly. Evan was letting him get away with it, but suspected he was just trying to convince himself he didn’t need to be embarrassed.

Similarly, he was Refusing To Be Embarrassed about not having realized that on the morning after his own handfasting, business-as-usual wouldn’t have its usual draw on him. Evan had let him get away with get away with pretending that he’d woken up that morning and very _calmly_ made the decision to tell Karkaroff to keep away from them on pain of extraordinarily splattery death.  He considered this to be very nice of him, and he was only doing it since Spike hadn’t been ass enough to try to be aloof and unemotional with Ev while explaining (or, more properly, Ev suspected, trying to make sense of) his ‘unexpected’ attack of humanity.

It had, actually, been unexpected, but only briefly.  Which was to say that Evan had thought Severus would realize his assumption that nothing would have changed was ridiculous and made arrangements to stay in bed _before going to sleep._

Seeing as Spike wanted to be an abacus or a piece of technomancy almost as much as he liked to call Evan an alien, so Ev should probably have been less surprised to wake up alone.  And also, since Spike was in fact in no way either a whirring silver thing on Dumbledore’s shelves or a muggle robot, less surprised to have his morning warm-up interrupted.

Not that he had any complaints about the warm-up he’d ended up with.

And—not ‘even better,’ but certainly icing on the cake—he felt, now, that he’d had a certain measure of deliciously well-chilled revenge.  Not for the green lightning thing from last week—Spike had Spike-apologized for that so intensely and earnestly that Evan’s smiles still went heavy-lidded whenever he remembered it.

This made Spike paranoid, because he couldn’t believe that Evan felt good now about something that had scared him so much at the time. ‘Forgiveness’ wasn’t in his vocabulary, even though he didn’t know how to stay angry at Evans longer than the next time she smiled at him, no matter how hard she’d kicked him in the teeth. He couldn’t trust it, coming from other people, and showing how sorry he was for something only made it worse.

Ev didn’t think he’d ever seen a more horrified Spike than when Evan had assured him _yes, it was bad, but it’s all right, you’ve made it to me now._ Which had taken some serious untangling. Two pots of tea later, Evan still wasn’t sure he understood. It seemed to be about the idea that one could make up for a mistake by doing something nice for the person who’d been hurt by it, but it didn’t make any sense.

While Ev agreed that an apology, however lovely, didn’t mean the memory was erased and nothing had happened, he didn’t think being afraid of being forgiven was called for. Spike seemed to think forgiveness was some kind of dark potion: take errant human, add forgiveness, poof: instant soulless monster who will never care again about hurting other people.  Severus would have killed anyone who’d said Reggie should be treated that way, or Narcissa, and been seriously indignant if anyone had even said it about, say Wilkes.

When confronted with this probability, Severus had asked what good Evan thought forgiving his darling cousin Frivolous had ever done Dumbledore or the world. Ev had said that first, it had won Dumbledore insane loyalty. Severus had interjected that ‘insane’ was well emphasized and the loyalty of someone who couldn’t be aimed or disciplined by either your will or their own wasn’t worth calling loyalty. The ensuing very dynamic explanation of ‘loose bottle rocket’ had distracted Evan from his second, more important point.

Namely: Severus wasn’t the sort of person who made mistakes because he couldn’t control himself (unless certain Gryffindors were involved, but that was their own fault).  When he didn’t like the way a cauldron had exploded in his face, he’d remember from then on not to add thestral mane into a copper cauldron over a flame at blue or violet heat.   _Every time._  And shriek at anyone whose fire was even edging towards robin’s-egg.

So this revenge wasn’t for the green lightning. Evan was perfectly happy with what he’d been given in repentance for that one. He was finished with being upset over it, no matter what Spike thought.

No, this revenge was for years and years ago—for that wistful little remark Severus had made after Ev had lost the plot and hit him for getting himself hurt.  This revenge was for ‘it’s a relief to know you can feel things after all.’

It was a _good_ revenge, cold and sweet and unexpected as a peppermint ice-mouse after lunch in July _._  To have Spike go to bed relieved to get out some benighted, irrelevant formality Evan had incomprehensibly insisted on herding him into’ of the way and wake up rattled and _affected_ and so full of feeling he couldn’t stop himself being openly clingy—revenge didn’t come nicer than that.

Ev had been entirely chuffed about it.  He’d even gone so far as to let himself feel pleased with himself for having such a good idea and then making it happen—although not, of course, to rub it in or even point it out.  That would have ruined his own lovely, lovely morning.

But Spike, who was called that for several ruddy good reasons, had then woken up the _next_ day and, after a cozy and mutually-smug interval, announced, “I suppose we’d best be getting along to prison, then.”

Sometimes Evan envied Spike’s facility with terrible language for which Linkin would have beat Evan to a puddle with a wooden spoon.  Spike seemed to find it so cathartic. Evan also, on rarer occasions, envied Linkin the spoon.

And he had the sinking suspicion, looking up at the grim grey walls currently being mocked by charming puffy clouds in a bluer-than-blue sky, that he was going to want some catharsis before the end of the day.  Everyone had assured him, when he’d directed their being-painted chatter into war stories, that Bulgaria was a _civilized_ country and there were no dementors at Nurmengard.

That was hard to believe, standing in its shadow, watching Spike’s shoulders do the re-setting that meant his brain was currently being clawed into ridiculousness by its not-terribly-secret inner feral kitten and needed a ball of yarn.  Since he also rather wanted to delay the inevitable until he felt a bit more settled about it, Evan remarked out loud on how unlikely the absence of dementors felt.

Spike obligingly failed to resist the temptation to speculate, replying, “Even Hogwarts has a poltergeist, Ev.  Even if there aren’t any unhappier ghosts here to chill the atmosphere, the pent-up frustration and resentment of so many wizards must be having some effect.   _Especially_ as the residents aren’t having their energies drained and their perceptions confused.”

“Residents,” Evan repeated, leaning into the warmest little flicker of wanting to smile that he could dredge up, and also leaning into Spike’s shoulder.  “Gracious, Master Snape, how diplomatic.”

Spike slid him a dirty, lime-sour _MESoP masteries do not count and that is the only thing that has been said that I will dignify with any response_ look, and resettled his shoulders again, this time more deliberately.  “We ought to be getting on,” he said.  And he said it repressively, but Ev’s shoulder had got bumped during the resettling, and not in an angry sort of way.

“How _do_ we get on?” Evan asked, trying to be more curious than dubious or daunted as he eyed the passage into the castle, so tall and narrow that it could have been an ant’s-eye view of the world’s most ominous wand.  They had odd eyes, ants, and the way the castle was nothing but gradations of darkness was probably what they _would_ see, in something so tall.

The tortured-iron gate read, ‘за доброто,” and when Evan looked at it without activating his Bulgarian-translation enchantment by trying to read it, it was so short and official looking that it would have seemed more like the castle’s name than a rallying cry that had killed thousands, if it hadn’t been twisted into writing a bit too much like Spike’s for anyone’s comfort.  “I mean,” Ev added, “I hope you weren’t planning to sneak in, Spike.  I know you found those blueprints, but…”

Spike arched a go-on eyebrow at him.  Being neither a yes-I-did-what-of-it or a don’t-be-absurd eyebrow, it left Evan full of the horrifying conviction that Spike’s plan—his _actual plan!!—_ had been to broom-handle his way through.

He was still fighting the urge to accuse Spike of letting proximity to Lily shred his hood into a mane when Spike said, suspiciously mildly, “If you have any better ideas, I should be delighted to hear them.”

“Turning around would be favorite,” he remarked, which made Spike’s eyes flash momentarily, expressively, skyward.  “Well, I don’t know what sort of ideas you expect me to have, Spike, but given who this castle is meant to contain…”

“It was built to contain muggles, primarily,” Severus pointed out.  Ev was sure he didn’t believe himself; he was just being contrary, and probably purely out of reflex.  “And it’s current _residents_ are wandless.”

“If wandlessness was enough to keep all wizards helpless, Azkaban wouldn’t need dementors,” Evan pointed out.

“Does it need them?” Severus asked silkily.  “Does it really?”

It rather made Ev want to jump him and apparate back to their hotel bedroom at once.  Of course, he’d _already_ wanted to apparate back into bed, but the monument to oppression they were faced with was enough to let him resist even Spike’s most spine-tingling voice.

(Barely.)

“Well, they keep invaders out, anyway,” Evan had started to reply reasonably. Then he heard himself and smacked his invasion-planning forehead in soft despair.

This admission of having walked into a trap with his eyes open was not enough to stop Spike smirking at him, but it did, apparently, prevent the point being belaboured.  All Spike said was, “I _would_ be delighted to hear it, Ev.  If you have one.  Honestly, I would.”

Flashing his hands up in exasperation, Evan repeated, “What kind of idea do you think _I’m_ going to have?”

“Well,” Spike said, just as reasonably, “she’s _your_ aunt.”

Evan tried to think of some response other than blinking stupidly at Spike.  In the end, he blinked stupidly at Spike.

“Madam Bagshot,” Spike supplied.  “ _I_ don’t know her.”

“She nags you about scribbling in books and what kind of fish you should be eating as brain-food,” Evan reminded him, still feeling stuck in the blinking-stupidly stage.

“I don’t know her well,” Severus conceded gracefully, which was to say: irritatingly. “I certainly don’t know why she’d send an emissary to her great-nephew.”

“I,” Evan said, and then tried, “Spike.  You.”

“Mm?”

“I am going to bite you,” Evan announced, tilting his chin up and wondering if this was what it felt like to be Reggie, always lost in admiration, ten steps behind, and terrified to his great-grandfather’s boots..

“Are you?” Severus raised a dubious eyebrow.  An evaluative one, though he tragically didn’t seem to be currently evaluating whether the cobblestone path was suitable for shagging Evan on.  Which it wasn’t, although the grass off to the side under the lemon tree looked nice, apart from the bees humming around the long-fallen fruit.  They both knew charms to send those packing, if they chose.

“Yes,” Evan informed him, rallying.  “On your _face_.”  In the light of Severus’s eyebrow, it had occurred to him that it was usually Spike who responded to being rattled with that kind of a faux-strike.  But then, it was usually Spike semi-resentfully admitting _Ev_ had out-thought _him._  Besides, they’d woven their magic together six subtle ways from Sunday in that sunlit cavern, so it was only natural for Ev to start picking up more Spikely instincts.  He thought it might even be fun, as long as he didn’t let it go too far.

“Well,” Severus shrugged, letting the thing go (for now; it was always only for now with him, because he was steadfast and patient and clever and that patch of lemon-scented grass really did look quite soft…) “it seems to me that the alternative to sneaking in is to be escorted in.  Because I don’t think that _breaking_ in is likely to go well.  And I certainly can’t provide any excuse.”

Ev narrowed his eyes at him, leaned in, and repeated, “On.  Your. Face.”

Spike kissed him, but it wasn’t especially mollifying.  Spike hadn’t meant it to be, anyway; it was a statement of fact, not an apology.  At least, Ev acknowledged, sighing in, it hadn’t been some patronizing sort of a you-can-do-it.

Of course he _could_ do it—and, in the end, he did, even though it turned out that Auntie B sent the defeated Dark Lord owls three or four times a year.

The guards, who didn’t let the letters pass to their prisoner unread, were initially rather skeptical that she would have sent her great-nephew a visitor without telling him so, or clearing it with them.  Evan felt strongly that they were entirely right, since Auntie B was every bit as punctilious as one might expect.

When it came to formalities, at any rate, and historical facts.  Not when her garden was involved.  Punctilious was not the word once she got her fingers in the dirt.  It was an attitude of which Evan thoroughly approved, but he would never, never approve of putting tiny little delicately white-glowing flowers as powerful as moly in as a filler for the giant sunflowers she _would_ keep letting go to seed and grow where they liked.

He was just opening his mouth to suggest that her feeble British owl might have been eaten by one of their mighty Bulgarian birds of prey when Spike butted in.  

“While Madam Bagshot no doubt has great affection for her nephew,” Severus said coldly in a tone that doubted Madam Bagshot’s great affection, somehow managing to look down his nose at a burly ash-blond a whole head taller than he was with shoulders that might just have been twice as wide, “she is not such a fool as to give notice to a Dark Wizard when she intends to send an emissary into his very presence.  Not to a Dark Wizard such as Grindelwald, whose power may be diminished but whose remaining shrewdness cannot be measured from afar.  I am astonished that anyone would expect it of a witch so perspicacious that her magnum opus informs the curriculum at four of the premier wizarding academies of the Western world.”

After a moment, Ash-blond’s even taller, wirier partner said, rather blankly, “Kakbo?”

“He means,” Evan didn’t-exactly-apologize, although he did let them have the long-suffering Spike Is Like This And We Must Accept It smile, “Auntie Bathilda didn’t think it would be safe to give your prisoner time to think about how he might use me.”

He hadn’t bothered to listen to the echoing magical translation of the taller guard’s very obvious _what?_ in his head, but he did pay attention to Ash-blond admitting, “That is wise, Piotr.  The fox takes on the white of old age against the snow.”

The taller guard seemed to have taken offense at having his partner looked down on by an overeducated wizard half their size, though, and suspiciously demanded of Spike, “And who are _you?_ ”  He didn’t add any specific insults, but he didn’t really have to.  Especially since he was talking to Spike, who tended to hear them even when people were being perfectly and even genuinely pleasant.

Spike shot him back what would have been a normal Spikely-polite quarter-smile, except for the frozen glint in his eyes that turned it gorgeously nasty.  “I,” he said, his rather bloodthirsty little smile widening marginally, “am Master Rosier’s wand and his shield.”

Piotr seemed about to take this as a challenge, but Ash-blond took his arm, murmuring urgently that everyone who had read stories of King Arthur and his crazy knights knew that the English were very strange about feudalism and Piotr wouldn’t get anywhere by taking offense at the pride of a bodyguard.

Not looking at them, so his words wouldn’t translate, Evan murmured, “Did you make him think that?”

“I don’t _think_ so,” Severus hedged cautiously, sotto voice, his face still a mask of hauteur.

“I can’t believe you said that all in Bulgarian,” Ev noted while the guards argued, his own face falling into familiar lines of stressed fondness that felt comfortingly out of place in this dismal entryway.  Spike shrugged in what Evan felt was a particularly continental way. He considered making a remark about how being rude and arrogant wasn’t going to convince the Bulgarians Spike was one of them when his accent, while admittedly less blatantly British than Evan’s, was still decidedly not native.

He was more than halfway to deciding against it, even though he thought a little teasing might settle the porcupine-hackles and thereby establish that the more intimidating of them wasn’t an imminent threat, when the guards came to their own conclusion. Pleasingly, it was to start bringing out the secrecy sensors and Dark Arts detectors.

And then, after they’d walked what must have been two miles through the twists and turns of the clammy stonework, Severus got far enough to glance through the humming crystal door of the cell, and then froze and wouldn't let him near it.

“He’s not dead, is he?” Ev asked in some alarm—and more hope.  It would simplify matters for everyone if even the Dark Lord had to admit their respective missions had been doomed from the start.

Nor was it an unreasonable conclusion. Evan had only thrown up _once_ in potions class during ingredients preparation, and it had been so early on in their third year that he and Spike had barely been more than friendly acquaintances mutually tugged along in Narcissa’s wake.  And he’d _told_ Spike it was because he’d been sitting too close to the ingredients table where the leech juice had fermented and was incredibly smelly.  Which would have been retch-making enough on its own, but he’d already been walking around with a moderately sick headache half the morning.  It had had nothing to do with the harvesting-fairy-wings assignment.

Nonetheless, Spike had fastened onto the notion that Evan’s artistic eyes were too sensitive to look at nasty things.  Evan had tried to disabuse him of this fantasy several times.   Spike had not been at home to the idea that the one way he’d found (at the time) to indulge his looking-after-people thing in Evan’s direction wasn’t useful.

(Evan had been mostly glad he hadn’t tried to indulge it at that mockery of a picnic in Dartmoor, awful and sick-making as it had been. Since absolutely nothing even potentially memorable had happened when they were riding horses at Dartmoor, however, Evan definitely only remembered what a lovely ride they’d had.)

So if Grindelwald was hanging rotting from the ceiling by his bedsheet, or even rolling around in a puddle of his own bile speckled with spattergroit, Spike was definitely not letting him in there.  Ev couldn’t think of any other reason unless security at the fabled Nurmengard was secretly abysmal and the man had somehow got hold of a wand.  Or had got control of his jailors and was sitting complacently in a plush armchair in front of a roaring fire with said wand in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, stroking a pet erumpent.

Er.

Evan didn’t actually think this last scenario particularly likely, even omitting the erumpent.  The jailors hadn’t given him any impressions to support it, even when he ran through his memory more suspiciously.  

The wand, though, that wasn’t completely incredible. Half the people Ev had painted scoffed politely at the idea that Grindelwald was a real prisoner. They mostly seemed to think he was submitting to a form of voluntary house arrest in his own castle as part of an informal agreement that would keep Britain, in the person of Dumbledore, from over-strenuous interference in Europe’s affairs. Which made sense to Evan; the grounds were so extensive that someone like Spike wouldn’t have been much bothered by confining himself to them. Not if it meant safety for enough people he cared about and he got a lab and all the books he wanted.

Therefore, Evan obligingly flattened himself against one wall, so the cell’s occupant wouldn’t see Spike had backup and Spike wouldn’t start panicking.  He did hiss, “What’s wrong,” but very quietly.

Spike said, illustratively, “Erm,” and then fell silent, looking awkward.

“Who’s there?” a strong voice demanded in Bulgarian.  “Is it you, Piotr, Josephus?  Have you brought my breakfast?”

“Schatzi sent you your morning meal an hour ago,” Ash-blond-who-was-possibly-Josephus scolded presumably-the-fallen-tyrant.

“Perhaps she sent it astray,” the voice suggested while Severus turned to Evan, one eye twitched smaller than the other, and mouthed _The cat sent it?_

Evan held up a hand, signed back, E-L-F / N-A-M-E, and gave Spike a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine shrug.  Then, since Ash-blond was getting ready to scold some more, he mentioned, “I wouldn’t mind a spot of tea.  Don’t suppose your hospitality would stretch that far for a poor beleaguered messenger-bird?”

Ash-blond looked at him as if he were crazy while the inside voice fell silent.  Calculatingly so, if Evan was any judge of silences.

Severus, speaking low, put a hand in one of his more obvious pockets and ‘explained,’ “The prisoner’s temper is legendary and Professor Bagshot has charged Master Rosier most sternly with the importance of his cooperation for her latest book.  Any sop to protect Master Rosier from his displeasure during this _private_ interview would be,” the hand in his pocket made a subdued clinking-metal sound, “most appreciated.”

The guards looked at him, respectively shrewd and suspicious.  It probably helped that Spike had positioned his body rather solidly between Evan and the doorway, suddenly looking much more wiry than bony.  And that Ev was rolling _you’re so overprotective, I’m not made of glass_ eyes at him.  Just like any silly-ass young fool anxious to impress everyone with what a strong, grown-up wizard he was, any at all.

“You will leave your wands here,” Ash-blond said finally, pointing to a shaped hollow in the stone wall, for all the world as if it hadn’t been something he would have demanded of them anyway.  Evan approved.

Severus, visibly, didn’t.

“The wands cannot be summoned from their nook,” Piotr told them witheringly, “and no hands but the ones who put them in can take them out.”  He sounded impatient, but he was watching them eagerly.  Evan had no doubt that no few would-be visitors had backed away from this demand, unwilling to be unarmed against a dark lord.  Ev, however, thought it only sense not to bring any wands into any room with him in it.  The old man was notoriously tricky, and at the very least he had his own blood and nails to lay spell-traps with.  Expelliarmus wasn’t the only way to convince a wand you’d won it.

“If you wouldn’t mind demonstrating,” Severus demanded flatly.  His shoulders hardened and widened, emphasizing that he was between Evan and the two of them, as well as the prisoner.  It was ridiculously sweet, considering the cloud of contained menace boiling out of his every pore.  Even (or maybe especially) if he was telling himself it was only because he had to maintain the role of a bodyguard.

The guards (very patiently, in Ev’s opinion) took turns trying to take each other’s wands out. When neither of them could reach into the hollow for the wrong wand, Severus put his own in and failed to do a wandless accio before making Evan try to fish it out.  It was as if the hollow was an illusion: the smooth line of the stone wall was unbroken to his hand.  Finally, Severus took his own wand back before grudgingly nodding his agreement to the guards.

“The tea will come to you, in ten shakes of a golden lamb’s tail,” Ash-blond said, “and we will return for you in ten minutes.”

Severus pursed his lips at this price. “A golden lamb would be greatly weighted down by its wool, its movements greatly impeded.  I should think it would take it two hours, at least, to shake its tail ten times.”

“Surely in even one hour it could shake at least twenty times,” Piotr proposed, philosophically but not very sweetly.  Spike did have that effect on some people.

“Oh, twelve, at most, I’m sure, in two hours,” Evan disagreed thoughtfully, because his experience in wizarding Bulgaria had taught him that haggling was not only expected but possibly the national sport.  In the end they settled on fifteen galleons to make the guards feel they’d won.  One hour, with tea-tray.

Severus failed horribly at not wincing, which probably made Piotr feel better about it.  Ev, however, was perfectly happy to pay the price of a decent pair of shoes to avoid failing obviously at the first obstacle that wasn’t even really an obstacle.  He’d seen Severus come back from training sessions even when the Dark Lord was _happy_ with him.  Besides, it wouldn’t be elegant.

And then, when Piotr had pointed his wand at the door and possibly-Josephus had touched a stone at the edge of the crystal, stopping the humming and making the door slide smoothly into the floor, Severus _still_ didn’t want to let Evan through.  “I can handle it,” he said unconvincingly.  “You should stay out here to make sure…” He hesitated, but refrained from insulting the guards’ integrity outright, finishing, “Just in case.”

“You can keep watch if you like,” Evan offered with an amused smile, brushing past him and brushing his wrist on the way.  Somewhere below that scowl, under all the staid, colorless cloth, roses were blooming.  It was enough to make a fellow feel he could manage _anything._

Once inside, though, he knew at once why Spike hadn’t wanted him to see. Spike wasn’t wrong.  He didn’t want to see it.

It wasn’t that the old fox presented any sort of a grisly appearance, although the stark interior of the cell represented a very clear compromise between the positions We Hate You and We Want Everyone To Know Via The Occasional Photo-Op that We No Longer Mistreat Prisoners.

The two thick blankets, the pile of mostly-English books that, unless they were under glamours, was a mix of quite old philosophy and quite old history and extremely trashy and well-thumbed romance novels, and the neatly folded stack of warm-looking robes suggested to Ev, in fact, that the guards had taken bribes from well-wishers many times before.  Hopefully, the desire to keep their jobs was enough to ensure they also examined these gifts for Potential Mischief before delivering them.  Ev wasn’t especially worried about that, though; Severus didn’t need his wand to act as a human lucifer or salamander, and Ev could pull at least one trick himself if things went sidewise.

What did concern him was the extremely solid and ugly desk with all the parchment and the wax crayons on it.  As long as they weren’t pure beeswax, they couldn’t do much harm magically.  And it seemed unlikely that they were, given the extremely garish yellow and green cardboard box most of them were in.  The word that was presumably the brand name was both unfamiliar to Evan and in Latinate letters, not Cyrillic, and those letters were extremely rounded.  Not a wizarding label at all, even discounting the lack of movement.

But the crayons didn’t have to be the sort one could write powerful runes and arrays with to be dangerous.  Given another twenty years, Evan was slightly concerned that Narcissa might be able to run the entire world even if all she had was parchment, a pigment-smearing stick of any sort, and one owl.  All the terrorizing would be for everyone’s own good, probably, mostly, but not everyone would be pleased about it even if she confined her totalitarian reign to their fashion choices.

Grindelwald had already ruled as much of the world as he seemed to care to, once.  As Evan had told Lily, the first time they’d had a conversation more than five minutes long and having nothing to do with the proper delegation of prefect duties (ie: away from Evan), there were all sorts of reasons to follow a movement.  Even if the vast majority of those reasons had to do with the follower’s personal needs and ambitions, there would always be some devotees that _believed._

There would always be some that believed so much in their leader that they didn’t care what that leader looked likely to to be able to do or to give them.  It wouldn’t matter to them if he were or imprisoned, or dead, or even openly renouncing everything they’d stood and fought for.  Some people’s wouldn’t care about that, would never be able to believe it.  Never most, but even a few fanatics were always dangerous.  ‘He’s lying so he can go on working for us in secret,’ they’d say.  ‘His spirit will keep on as long as we keep faith with him, keep fighting,’ they’d say.

They’d say, ‘Of course we’ll have to be careful with our letters now, but being locked up just gives him more time to plan his comeback!’

Evan had really hoped this was going to be easier.  Given everything he’d heard about Azkaban, of course he _approved_ when a prison was run with higher-minded principles, but still: inconvenient to the point of potential catastrophe.

That wasn’t what Spike had wanted to shield him from, though.  Nothing like so sensible.  No, what had make Spike flinch was this:

Curling licks of gold like koi fish under ice, darting through the retreating, wispy white hair.    Powerful bones locked into a frame that was trying to sag with hardly any flesh on it, moving with the habits of confident power to pin them with pouched stone-blue eyes, creased into arrowheads of permanent hauteur.  A full mouth lined with old sternness, distorted inwards, set in a long, Nordic wedge of a face under a small, straight nose…

Absently, Evan ran a thumb over his lips, up to touch where his nostrils met his cheek, down towards his chin.  All his teeth were where they ought to be, and if he had any lines at all starting, they were wider, smilier.  No bags under his eyes, either, thank you.

He supposed he could guess why Aunt Bathilda had chosen to only use woodcuts in A History of Magic, rather than any photographs. It had probably been considerate of her. It had probably saved him a lot of suspicion at school, maybe even afterwards.

Spike was just behind his shoulder, fiercely radiating heat through the hand resting lightly between Evan’s shoulderblades.  There were broad-blooming, thorny roses on those strong arms, Ev reminded himself, but the capable hand on him was only one thin stroke of warmth in this very chilly cell.  He felt more than heard himself whisper, “No one told me.”

“Bastards,” Spike hissed back, stonily steamed indignation in his ear.  In, not through: he didn’t have any holes in his.  He fought the strong desire to reach up and make sure.  “Bloody _Binns._ ”

The old man looked startled himself, if not so shaken, as his granite eyes raked Evan.  The hard gaze dragged from his thickly waving, rosier hair in its club, down his most businesslike plum-black and silver-smoke mantled waistcoat with its dashing diagonal close, which brought out his hair and had felt somber this morning but now felt like a dangerous satire, all the way down past his soft trouser-cuffs, the ever-so-slightly swishy sort you could wear with or without a robe, lingering on shoes that had also felt comfortable and sensible this morning.  Evan suddenly felt Spike’s worst, clunkiest schoolboy work-boots would have been a better choice.

The eyebrows—not bushy or white, but so close-set and old-gold they had nearly faded into his skin—went up, turning the forehead into a field of disdainful lines.  Evan kept his own face smooth and faintly smiling, the purest public-face he could drag over his own long bones.

But when Grindelwald spoke, Evan’s shoulders released.  There was nothing that struck home in that voice honed to sooth and impress.  Something familiar, unquestionably: the tone was charismatic, compelling, could have been called coaxing if it hadn’t been so confident.  But it wasn’t Ev’s father the velvet-over-sandpaper voice with its clipped and gentle accent reminded him of.  It was his father’s dear friend, who Evan (he was supposed to think) couldn’t afford to disappoint.

“No one would come here only to play a very bad joke,” Grindelwald mused, eyes raking lazily over Evan again before spearing Spike over his shoulder.  “What do you want?”

“What do we all want?” coolly countered Severus.  He was so close that Evan could hear the rush of hair over his collar as he tilted his head.  “Freedom, safety, comfort, glory.”

“No, you will not make me think you are mine,” Grindelwald frowned. Severus blinked.  “You have come for a purpose.”  His eyes narrowed.  “Perhaps not for your own purpose, English.”

“No,” Severus agreed blandly.  Evan knew from long exposure that his lips had quirked sardonically when he added, “I must begin by giving offense, in saying we are come from the greatest wizard in the world.”  

Obviously ‘must’ was a bald-faced lie: no one had told him to say that. He’d just decided, probably on a split-second-but-carefully-calculated whim, to see what he could provoke.  Certainly it was a provocative thing to say to a wizard who’d tried to be an Alexander and very nearly succeeded, and offense was to be expected. Evan was still astonished by what he fished out of the old man:

Grindelwald screwed up his mouth and spat onto the floor.  He followed this with a stream of outrage and disgust in what sounded like German.  Evan didn’t know any of those particular words, but he could feel Spike, behind him, swallowing down a snort of rattled amusement.  “Surely,” Grindelwald glared at them after he’d wound down, “he is not so far gone as to say so of himself!”

“No-o,” Spike drew out judiciously, his voice still trying not to smirk, “but I don’t think he minds much when other people say it.”

There was another incensed flurry of German.  It began with the word ‘that,’ and Evan’s own German, picked up travelling with his family, was sufficient to let him pick up a few choice bits. Such as ‘childish,’ ‘crooked nose,’ ‘knows very well I let him win,’ and ‘smelly-footed whore son of a dirty nanny-goat.’  Evan assumed the rest was too unkind for Linkin to have let him be exposed to.

“I believe there’s been a misunderstanding,” Severus said in a voice choked with repressed triumph at so easily maneuvering Grindelwald into showing his position, if not his hand.  He was managing to make it sound like laughter that admired the prisoner’s mastery of probably-profanity, and he was speaking loud and halting German whose accent betrayed that he’d learned it by reading but was perfectly comprehensible.  That warmed Evan up, just a little, although he couldn’t really have said why if anyone had asked.  “It isn’t Dumbledore to whom I refer.”

Grindelwald stopped pacing and turned to glare at them—more offended yet, if possible.

“There’s no need to look at him like that,” Evan said mildly.  “He told you he had to.”

“Shut up, badger-brain,” Severus instructed hypocritically, but he didn’t mean it.  Ev could feel the eager intrigue in him as they stood there, back to chest.

“You told my imprisoners that you come from my aunt,” Grindelwald noted, eyeing them assessingly.

“Well,” Evan said, smiling judiciously, “I _have_ seen the lady recently, and if there’s anything you’d like to tell her, I’d be happy to pass it along…”  He hesitated, then screwed up his nerve.  Meeting the grubby old prisoner’s eye, he half declared and half admitted, “to m’dear old Auntie B.”

Grindelwald scowled, turning chillier as Evan claimed what rights and protection the thin blood between them could give him.  He demanded, “Who are you?”

“Unimportant,” Severus said, somewhere between smooth and wry.

“You will give me your names!”

Evan was right: Grindelwald didn’t need a wand to be powerful.  He flinched.

Spike didn’t.  Shrugging, he said, “You may call him Occam, and me Murphy.”

“Nobody could possibly call you _Murphy,_ ” Evan protested, making a face at the sound of the name, at the same time Grindelwald said, puzzled, “Occamies I know, but what is a murph?  A beast that changes?”

“Never mind,” Severus muttered in a frustrated my-joke-has-been-thwarted-by-idiocy sort of way.

Evan hoped, probably in vain, that he wasn’t visibly rolling his eyes.  “You’d make a better occamy,” he rushed in suggest to his very own feathered serpent.  “He can call me, er… Hawthorn?  Runespoor?”

He was getting narrow-eye-stared at from front and back, and told Spike, “Look, not everything has to be clever, all right?  We’d best get on with it, hadn’t we?”

Spike hummed dubiously.  If Evan knew him at all, he was thinking that occamies were prettier and a three-headed snake that was so self-critical it often died as two-faced as Janus suited him better, but he didn’t argue.  Which was just as well, because insisting on getting it exactly right when they only had an hour to do loads of things was about as feather-headed as it got.

“Yes,” Grindelwald said sharply.  “Do not waste my time, little serpents.”

Now Evan could practically _hear_ Spike not-commenting about what the man might be so busy with that he couldn’t have his time wasted.  Instead of stepping on Spike’s foot to stop him actually saying any of it,  he merely agreed, “Right-o.  In any case, as he said, as far as I know Dumbledore’s still not the sort to give himself airs like that.”

“Just addled ones,” Severus muttered. Someone who didn’t know him might have thought he was griping because he couldn’t help himself, but there was a definite note of fondness in it.  It was so definite that Evan was sure Grindelwald was meant to hear it—and seemed to; he narrowed his stony eyes a little more, but his eyebrow twitched in a sort of can’t-argue-with- _that_ movement.

“You might say,” Evan continued affably, “that we’ve been sent by the Knights of Walpurgis.”

“But have you?” Grindelwald asked, eyes glittering in an unnervingly Spike-like sort of way.  He sounded almost prepared to be impressed enough to grant them an iota of respect.

“A derivative group,” Severus said.  Evan couldn’t quite name that tone as either modest or wry.  “The original order has been somewhat… subsumed.  It’s last, or latest, leader is the wizard on whose orders we’ve come.”

“And does _he_ have a name?” Grindelwald asked—a bit snidely, in Evan’s opinion.

“His name is not to be spoken,” Severus said with a bit of a sneer in his voice.  The sneer was not for Grindelwald, and Grindelwald was clearly supposed to notice that, and did.  “I think we may call him Basilisk.”

Grindelwald leaned back in his… chair?  It was chair-like, and in front of the writing desk.  Like the writing desk, it had clearly been transfigured from the floor.  Evan wasn’t sure if a shaped piece of floor that was still solidly part of it could properly be called a chair.  Grindelwald sat back against it, in any case, and stroked his chin.  Evan wondered whether the guards occasionally shaved him, or how that worked.

He didn’t have to wonder what Grindelwald was thinking, though.  Spike’s signals had been almost brazen enough for a baby Hufflepuff to suss out, and this was no naïve badgerling.  Grindelwald didn’t take any bait yet, though (not that anyone had expected him to), but only asked, “Then what does _he_ want of me, this ‘basilisk’?  They do nothing but kill and eat, these monsters.”

Evan considered this to be an extremely fair point, but Severus said, smoothly, “Like any great serpent, like any dragon, they also protect what is theirs, or theirs to guard.  The basilisk holds you in high regard, sir.  Speaking in broad strokes, he wants what you wanted, for his own people, for the wizards of Britain.”

“Freedom, safety, comfort, glory,” Grindelwald mocked.  Evan expected him to fold his arms and sneer, but he didn’t.  The remains of Germanic discipline, maybe.

“Freedom to be great, without scuttling about like cowed dogs, hiding from the mundane world,” Severus agreed.  Evan heard the hair-rustling as he nodded equably.  “Freedom to make safety from the ever-advancing, ever evolving march of cold iron.  Freedom to live as we wish, to use the gifts born into us openly, to make as much of ourselves as we can dream and as our natures permit—not merely so much as we _may,_ insofar as we don’t make dare to make lesser mortals the least bit anxious or envious.”

“You are eloquent, Occamy Murphy,” Grindelwald said, stroking his chin again.  It made Evan a bit queasy to watch long, square-tipped, shrunken-skinned fingers pass over a jaw too much like the one he saw in his mirror every day.  Even, or maybe especially, since it was a rather jowlier one than even Dad’s, let alone Evan’s own.  “Are these words writ down for you, or do you believe what you say?”

“No one ever tells him what to say,” Evan told his… his cousin.  It was all natural; they _were_ related, even if it was a distant tie.  This was his cousin, not a cursed mirror.  “I mean, they could, but why on earth?”

“The silvertail tells me what to say all the time,” Severus contradicted dryly, moving out from behind Evan so as to more easily quirk an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, well, _dinner parties,_ ” Evan dismissed this airily.  “Of course she does; you’re rubbish at those.”

“Answer my question,” Grindelwald commanded impatiently.

Severus pursed his lips.  Ev was worried that Grindelwald would think his pause to narrow down on a precise answer had been to figure out what Grindelwald wanted to hear, but Spike’s customary Accuracy Is God tone carried the day for him.  “There are some who agree with your decisions completely, within our organization,” he said in his most I-must-be-fair-and-accurate-but-am-surrounded-by-crazy-people voice, “and want war of one sort or another.  To dominate, or destroy utterly.  There are those who want complete secrecy—to be entirely unentangled from the muggle world, our communities ours and only ours, no contact and no mingling.

“We both think,” he indicated himself and Evan, “that the muggle world has grown too large, too ungainly, too complex, and too sensitive, since the turn of the century, for the dream of dealing with them in any simple manner to still be achievable.  What the Basilisk truly believes, what he hopes to achieve in the end… I would not dare to speak for him.  But this I can say: more than others in our world, he understands that sprawling, disconnected adversary.”

He tilted his head again, regarding Grindelwald sardonically.  “Do not ask me for details, but it’s my firm belief that when your puppets came for London, the Basilisk learned first-hand and up close to respect the power of the muggle bomb.”

Grindelwald was thinkingly quiet for a moment, his wolf-statue eyes trying to pierce Spike’s head (Evan could have told him not to bother).  Finally, he said, “In America, they punish the mixing of blood very harshly—or they did once.  In your England, they do not make of it a crime, but I remember much contempt.”

“Much,” Severus agreed quietly, his own eyes slitting into cautious knives as he met that grey gaze.

“We do not think this way in Europe,” Grindelwald told him.  “It is distasteful to lower oneself to consort with the creatures of dull clay, but strong magical blood can come of this sacrifice, out of lines whose light is dimming.”

“Families don’t survive without new blood,” Severus allowed, noncommittal.  “Stale blood, mixed and re-mixed, does not lead to healthy outcomes.”

“We know in Europe,” Grindelwald agreed, “that magic is magic.  That every magical child is _ours,_ no matter what filth it came out of.  You have the word ‘mudblood,’ but mud can be rich soil, and what grows out of it can be, itself, pure and bright.”

“If you start a dissertation on the distinctions between mud, loam, and clay, _again,_ ” Evan told Spike hastily, “we’ll never get out of here unless I sit on you.”

Spike’s eyes flashed to him—with good humor, although ‘merry’ wasn’t a word that could really be applied.  Back to Grindelwald, he murmured, “There were changelings once in Britain, too.  Some think there should be again.”

“Are you one of these?” Grindelwald challenged him.

“I find it an extreme solution to an admittedly difficult problem,” Spike said carefully, his eyes darkening.

Evan couldn’t have said what, exactly, it was about the old man’s expression that set him off.  He just suddenly felt impelled, quite strongly, never to find out what _I will understand you better and better until you’re mine_ looked like on a face that decidedly was not his own and never would be.  “It’s quite a young order,” he therefore said affably.  “Diversity of opinions and all that.  All work itself out in time, no doubt.  After all, there’s surely room for minor differences of opinion when everyone’s on the same side, what?”

Now they were both studying _him,_ which was infinitely preferable.  Grindelwald just wanted to know whether he was naïve or not, and was probably not (Evan hoped) being helped to any conclusions by the sleepily complaisant smile he was getting back.  Spike, on the other hand, had been surprised and alarmed by what he sometimes liked to call a ‘whiskery old military sod-ism,” and was trying so hard to get into his head that Ev could almost feel his skin prickle.

Ev would have liked to take his hand and give it a possessive-and-reassuring squeeze, but that didn’t seem quite the thing at the moment.  He didn’t even really want to angle himself towards Spike, like they might have at school when they thought they were alone but weren’t sure, in case Grindelwald understood that sort of thing.  It might be useful to tell him how they stood together at some point, but he didn’t want to just let the information fly for nothing.

Instead, he let his eyes flicker even sleepier as he turned his attention inward.  Without the least idea whether it would have any effect, he imagined his heart-rate pounding louder, slower, deep and contented.  Remembered, with all the concentration he could muster, the warm, blissful, weighty exhaustion of curling up around a Spike all rattled by the momentary inability to care about anyone but him.

After a moment of continuing to look dubious and paranoid at Evan, Severus jumped in his skin, just a little, and his right hand moved as if it wanted to plaster itself over his heart.  Just a tiny twitch, but then his shoulders dropped, and his eyes turned a softer midnight.  This completely ruined Ev’s ability to keep his heartbeat loudly soporific, but he supposed that was all right if Spike had already gotten the message.

“Really, Runespoor,” Spike complained, his eyes having moved back to Grindelwald once they’d finished filling Ev up with hot mulled wine.  “There’s never any such thing as a _side,_ only people willing to deal and compromise to get what they want instead of going to war against each other.”

“That’s what I said,” Evan complained mildly, letting himself smile a little at his clever cobra, who was taking his vague, insipid, meaningless platitude and turning it into an implied promise to treat a prideful old man who’d (apparently) lost everything with respect, as an ally, to never tell him _you must be with me in all things or I’m against you._  “Isn’t that what I said?” he appealed to no one in particular, although Grindelwald was welcome to pick it up.  “I’m sure that’s what I said.”

“Perhaps you think I do not speak English,” Grindelwald said irritably, “but it may be you who does not.  Or perhaps you do not appreciate the value of time.  English red-heads, you are all the same.”

At least Spike looked as baffled as Evan felt.  Well, he didn’t _look_ baffled, exactly, but he blinked twice very fast and his left eyebrow furrowed down.

“You have admitted to me that you have lied to the guardians of this keep,” Grindelwald snapped.  “I will call them back and tell them so if you do not get to the point!  The novelty of strange company is nothing to me: I told you not to waste my time!”

Spike opened his mouth to snap back, probably because there was an misprint in his mental dictionary even Evan, Narcissia, Lucius, and Reggie all working together had been unable to correct.  It defined ‘correspondence’ as ‘silly ego-stroking social dance with no real purpose because politeness is fundamentally not useful.’  He might not have entirely missed the significance of Grindelwald’s full writing desk, but he clearly hadn’t grasped its full potential.  It would never have occurred to him that a prisoner could be a legitimately busy wizard.

Evan hastily and loudly said, “Someone else seems to be spending theirs rather liberally.  Where’s that tea at?”

As he’d hoped, the elves had just been waiting for someone to say the word.  No sooner had he spoken but a tray appeared on the floor.  It had a pitcher of water, a pot of jam, and a plate with slices of unappetizing white brine cheese and a pile of some things that looked as if plain, uncooked scones had fallen into the frying pan.  The pitcher, tray, pot, cups, and plate were all wooden, and they had runes carved in that enchanted them to be feather-light, soft on impact, and unbreakable.

Spike glanced at the desk, saw the stony expression as Grindelwald watched him look, and shrugged, abandoning the idea of eating at a real table like real people.  He squinted at the tray.  As a frost-white stool formed under it, lifting it to a height that would let them eat comfortably if they sat on the floor, the room quickly began to feel less clammily humid.

Grindelwald’s chapped lips pursed.

“ _I_ have no intention of sitting on ice,” Severus said irritably as he settled himself down in the Japanese style.  It was just like him to take that expression as a criticism, when it was so clearly a refusal to be impressed with his wandless magic.  Crossly (which was different from irritably, although Ev would have been mildly interested to know whether Grindelwald could tell), he added, “So much for _tea_.”

“It wouldn’t have been to your standards,” Evan commiserated.  He didn’t drop any comforting arms around Spike’s shoulders as he himself dropped down on crossed legs, much as he wanted to.

“Perhaps they think you will make your own,” Grindelwald told Spike sarcastically, sitting down with very little grace.

Evan resolved to not only tell Narcissa but act out for her the way that Spike, rather than saying anything sarcastic back, took on an _I am an idiot_ sort of chastised look, put the pitcher down on the stone floor, and brought it to a simmer with a touch while fishing a linen pouch and a tin of tea out of a cloak-pocket.

It took about all he had to say, “Oh, ta,” just in a strangled voice, without bursting out laughing.  Especially since Grindelwald was giving Spike the _what is WRONG with you_ eyes-different-sizes look that Spike had, to date, gotten at some point from absolutely everyone he’d ever met with the possible exception of Dumbledore and the slightly-less-possible of Evans.  Ev hadn’t seen her do it, but was really quite sure she had.  He himself certainly had, although probably not very often since third year.

Blowing on his tea, Evan watched carefully as Grindelwald looked, still slightly cross-eyed, at Ev’s sulking Spike.  Eventually, the fascination had ebbed enough for the prisoner to take a cautious sip and then give it, too, a confused look, though not a displeased one.  

Ev wasn’t surprised.  Bulgaria didn’t know how to do tea properly.  Apart from the Turkish variety, they weren’t all that strong on coffee, either.  Admittedly, living with Severus left a fellow more than a bit spoiled in both these departments,  but here they really did seem to put more effort into brandy and fermented grain drinks that weren’t even alcoholic.

“Well,” Ev said comfortably when he judged Grindelwald was about ready to stop staring suspiciously at his tea and start snapping again, “We’ll blame it on my hair if you like, but I must admit you’re quite right that getting straight into a matter’s not usually the thing.  Still, if it’ll make you and Occamy happy—”

“It might,” Severus put in dryly.

Evan grinned at him before continuing, “I don’t mind.  What is it you want, then?”

“I think it is you who wants something,” Grindelwald pointed out, sour, and sniffed his tea as though he suspected a will-weakening potion.

“We’re emissaries,” Severus reminded him.  “All _we_ want is to go home, which we’ll do at the conclusion of this visit regardless of its success.”

“You’re lying,” Grindelwald accused immediately, scowling.

Evan grinned again, delighted.  That’d teach Spike to be sulky in public.  “He’s just mad because he had to give up his flat for a new day job and hasn’t moved into the new place yet,” he explained.  “We really do only have today; we’re back to England tonight and that new job starts tomorrow.”

“Ugh,” uttered Spike with clean disgust.  “It doesn’t _really_ start till Monday,” he reminded himself forlornly.  “I get an orientation.”

“With twinkles,” Evan reminded him, still grinning.  “And walrus-face.”

Grindelwald’s faded eyebrows furrowed.  Slowly, he said, “On Monday, September begins.  You will be at that school, you will be teaching?  How old are you, boy?”

Ev and Spike glanced at each other in surprise.  “I won’t be a professor,” Severus said slowly.  “That was… quite a leap, sir.”

Grindelwald dismissed him with a _bah_ noise.  “Do you think you are the first to call your teachers these things?”

Evan was unrepentant. He’d learned something, and the information was about to be in the public record anyway. If working it out made Grindelwald feel smug with himself, so much the better.

“So, then: what you have come for is information on Albus Dumbledore.  Tell the truth, boy: is it for you or for your master?”

“That’s not what we were sent for,” Spike said, still slowly, “but I’d certainly be interested to hear anything you had to say.”

“Look at you, learning the value of gossip,” Evan smiled, bumping his shoulder by way of a distraction for their audience.  That had been next-door to a lie, and Grindelwald had already called Spike on untruthfulness when he just _resented_ the truth.  “The silvertail would be so proud.”

“Oh, shut up,” Spike groused.  Turning back to Grindelwald, he said, “In any case, we don’t expect you to hear us out without an assurance that we can give you return value.”

“Can you help me from this place?” Grindelwald demanded.

“I seriously doubt it,” Spike replied bluntly.

Although Evan was ready to thunk his head on the ice-table in despair, Grindelwald looked pleased.  Of course, he was the one who’d had the prison built.  “Good,” he said curtly, “you are honest.  What, then, do you imagine you can do for me?  I have such comforts as I require; your soft English luxuries do not interest me.”

“I imagine,” Ev said thoughtfully, itching at his nose with his knuckle (Spike had really used a _lot_ of air-moisture to make that table, and probably wouldn’t have been able to make stools for them even if anyone had wanted a cold seat. He was going to have to hit the lotion hard, the way his skin was feeling), “that you’d like to be able to communicate more conveniently with your followers.  The anti-avian spell’s carved into that window quite deeply, and I already know your guards are nosy fellows who’d like more reading material about the place to keep them busy.”

“And how do you think you will do that?” Grindelwald fired back, leaning forward keenly.

Ev gave him an airy shrug, and assured him, “No trouble at all.  I need to talk to some of them m’self, I’m sure spreading about a bit won’t be a problem.”

“Ahhhh.” The old man’s very straight back eased out, just a little.  He was looking at Evan piercingly, but Ev had grown up with Spike, Narcissa, and all his aunts and uncles.  This was nothing.  It might have thrown Reggie and Uncle Orion a little, but Ev just smiled back at him lazily.

He wasn’t the one who swung it for them, though, in the end. Later, smiling under the open sky again, he commented, “I don’t think conjugal visits is a promise you can keep.”

Instantly horrified, Spike very nearly sputtered, “I didn’t make _any_ promises, and if I’d promised anything, _conjugal_ visits was not it!  I _threatened_ him with _suspicious threatening activity-monitoring_ visits!”

“Sure, Spike,” Evan laughed, “but that was what he was angling for, so there you are.”

“I can’t believe he put his experimental-muggle-vivisecting-prison in a lemon grove,” Severus boggled, looking as if he’d be ill once he’d finished wrapping his mind around it.

“Well,” Evan tilted his head, sliding in around Spike’s neat, warm waist, “to be fair, I think it was more that he planted the lemon grove around the prison.  Thumbing his nose, quite likely, since I don’t think he was living there at the time.  D’you think he had the hives brought in on purpose?”

“Wouldn’t have needed to, bees and wind are some of the more common lemon tree pollinators and Bulgaria’s stuffed with them,” Severus and his Herbology NEWT shrugged.  “ _I_ want to know if that’s why he’s losing his teeth.”

“Oh, _Spike…_ ”

“No, really—if he’s got an addiction to those godawful sweets or to lemonade and they’re not giving him any dental charms, that’s something we might be able to offer him, isn’t it?”

“That’s a bit ruthless,” Ev noted, not really judging it one way or the other.

Spike blinked at him.  “You don’t think we ought to ensure someone we’re trying to make our ally can keep his bloody _teeth_?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Evan laughed, and pressed him down against the sedate, nicely-earthed roots of the nearest tree, with it’s classically-shaped, glossy, bright green leaves and the vibrant smells that the soil and Spike’s herbal notes complicated gloriously.

Six hours later, the unspeakable danger of Spike confronted with two separate sets of snippy bureaucracies had been _finally_ smoothed over.  The Scottish sun was rouging mountains so familiar that Evan’s brain was wrung taught and jangling between barely noticing them at all and running around in circles screaming, and they were looking at quite a different castle, with gates that looked far more welcoming but were in fact far more darkly foreboding.

Evan hesitantly put his hand under the squared brickwork pillar under the Faithfully Vigilant piggywing that sat gazing benevolently out at the Forbidden Forest.  “You sure you’ll be all right, Spike?”

Severus’s eyes darted, as if trying to find humor, to the not-quite-lacily spiky ironwork of the gate.  “It’s just the school,” he said dryly.  “It’s not as if it’s the hunting-grounds of werewolves, entitled torturers, or sadistic, giggling, ravening marauders.”

Evan looked at him helplessly, his hands opening and closing as if a wand could help.

Severus smiled more dryly still, then reached up to touch his face, and leaned in to kiss him, and pulled quietly away.  Addressing the piggiwings, his face falling hard, he declared, “Severus Snape, Research Fellow, coming home.”

The gates swung open, and he strode through without a backwards glance.

Evan watched his narrow back until the tall, hard oak doors swallowed it.  Swallowing himself, he apparated home.  To his own gates, outside Rosier Hall.  He wanted to walk through the gardens, to touch every rose, to walk the limits of his land as he and Spike had done at Lammas.

He did keep his shoes on, though.

Linkin joined him before he’d walked more than five minutes or so, dressed in a tunic-like object Evan recognized from an old curtain, and a very tall grey top hat over his pointy ears.  Honoring Evan’s mood, he wrapped his long, spindly fingers around Evan’s wrist and squeezed once before slipping something that was probably a biscuit into his overrobe pocket, and didn’t speak.

When, an hour or two of slow meandering later, complete with a pause to sketch Linkin dusting the gazebo, they’d made their way around to the front doors though, he scowled ferociously and demanded, “Master Evan will eat?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Evan said listlessly.  “Mum and Dad aren’t home, are they?  Grandpère’s in his rooms over the studio?”

“Young Master and Mistress Callisto are in Brazil, painting things,” Linkin said dismissively.  “And Master is staying in his suite in London, as usual.  Twist is looking after Master, and Mistress Callisto is looking after Young Master.  Master Evan will have hot chocolate, or onion soup.”

“Soup, I suppose.  You’ve set up my room?”

Linkin looked insulted.  “Young master’s suite has been prepared for him all month.  Linkin has cleaned it every day.”

Evan smiled, a little wanly.  “I’ll have it there, then.”  He paused.  “Two bowls, Linkin.  Just in case.”  Linkin bowed, and Evan pretended not to see him smirking.

He made his way back to the door of the sterile little room he’d grown up in—

—and stepped into the slate-grey, maple, and sky-paintings of his flat in Diagon.  Everything was just as it should be, except that the window looked out onto the riotous flower-beds of his House’s garden, and there was a squared-off, empty space in one corner where the china cabinet had been. Not the one with the tea things; that would be in the kitchen that had formerly been Evan’s closet.

Evan put his hand in his pocket and took out the little package from Dumbledore that Lily had given him and Spike in the caves.  He re-opened it, settled it carefully in the corner, and tapped it with his wand.   _“Engorgio!”_

The tiny wardrobe swelled until it was proper-furniture sized.  Evan smiled, running his hand lovingly down the harmonious Celtic carvings, the knotwork and runework, to see that Dumbledore had had it made in maple.  He opened its door and stepped through.

In a grey stone-slab room hung with the calligraphy from his office at St. Mungo’s and lined with faded tapestries, shelves stuffed with potions books and journals, and ancient wall sconces, Severus was looking harried at a writing desk that wasn’t significantly less ugly than Grindelwand’s even if it wasn’t actually bolted to the flagstones.  He seemed to have clutched through his hair more than once, and the bed they’d given him managed to look forbidding even with curtains all around it.

“Have you eaten?” Ev asked, eyebrows up scoldingly.

He was rewarded with a look of pure, startled relief, flatteringly (he’d never say pathetically) grateful.  “I _tried,_ ” Spike defended himself, “but Dumbledore and Slughorn kept talking to me, and the new Divination professor is an inveterate gusher and the new DADA teacher’s apparently heard I was also interested in his job.  In any case, there’s a lot to prepare for, and only tonight and tomorrow to do it.”

“Well, come through and eat at home,” Ev said, folding his arms by way of warning Spike that the next step of the invitation would be to get physically dragged.  “You can read all that lot on the sofa with me, can’t you, there’s no need to ruin your eyes in this poky dungeon of an office.  Come on, Linkin’s made onion soup.”

Spike hesitated, but it had to be for the look of the thing.  “With sage and thyme?” he hedged.

“Well, I told him two bowls, so I’m sure he made it just as herbishly inedible as you could ever wish.”

He held out a hand, but it was his forearm Spike took in the end.  Over his tree, where the ribbons had bound them fast together.  “Oh, all right, then,” the git sniffed loftily, and let Evan, laughing at him through a kiss, pull him through the Vanishing Cabinet into _their_ family’s House.

Spike took one long, slow look around at all the pale wood and the cool wallpaper and furniture, their shadowy blue-grey sofa and armchairs still smooth, soft glove leather until winter drove them to wand-tap the spectrolite inset and turn them to suede.  His gaze drank in Evan’s paintings, the window that opened onto the bird-and-cricket riddled roses and trees through the window instead of the bustle and noise of a busy street, all his books that didn’t have (much) to do with work.  Down the hall, where the only door missing was to the second bedroom, which had never seen much use anyway.

All the tension hemorrhaged out of Severus’s body, as if only the soles of his shoes had been keeping it in and they’d suddenly been vanished.  He collapsed limply on the sofa, still clutching Ev’s wrist, and breathed, “ _Thank Merlin fucking god_. _”_ Linkin hadn’t even made it back with the soup before he’d curled up around a squashy armrest and fallen asleep, hard, pulling a bemused Evan semi-diagonal.

Evan would rather have liked some help deciding how to describe their visit to Grindelwald to the Dark Lord.  He was hardly going to wake Spike up for a triviality like that, though.  Not even for Linkin’s excellent and homely soup, if Spike’s body was that sure it needed sleep more.  So he just changed the order to a single hot chocolate, summoned the worn old blanket Severus had stolen from the common room when they’d left school (time to get a new one now?), scooped his eternally frazzled snidget up into the cushioning shield of his body, and lit the hearth.

This was far from a perfect evening.  For one thing, it was both vexing and fretful to know his parents might come back at any time and become more the masters of his House than he was.  It left him feeling like a child again; every day he’d ever spent in his own house had been just like that, because Mum and Dad didn’t believe in schedules.  His theory was that they’d wanted him to be afraid of ordering Linkin to serve him pudding for breakfast, in case they popped back home in the middle of it.

Besides, he’d been longing for their own, familiar bed, which Linkin was sure to have in its proper state: aired and cool and smelling just slightly of sandalwood.  He’d also ended up quite looking forward to that soup, and the Dark Lord, however ultimately unimportant, really was a nagging worry.  

More pressingly, Linkin would keep whatever he liked from his parents unless they gave him direct orders otherwise, but Evan would definitely have to explain himself (which was to say, Spike) to Grandpère, and soon. Linkin wouldn’t be blind to or able to ignore someone smelling like Family who hadn’t before, and Grandpère had never been entirely convinced on the merits of Severus Prince’s prickly, penniless, half-breed grandson even as a _friend_ for Evan.  With Narcissa’s support he wasn’t worried, exactly, and he expected the recent work Spike had put into his sunlit career and his de Medici connections to help, but it still wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.

Still, it occurred to him as he drifted off with his world safe in his arms, he’d never, not once in his life, been quite so much _at home_ as this.

He woke with the scent of roses drowning the air through a window he certainly hadn’t opened, dawnlight and gauzy curtains streaming in and silver-green feathers bubbling over in his heart: Severus had turned them around overnight and was curled all about him, a possessive hand splayed under his throat with a finger at his pulse, sleepily kissing the small of his back over and over.  He might very well have been imagining it, but he _thought_ what Severus was mouthing almost silently against his skin (a habit formed to combat humiliating pensieve evidence, as if his general demeanor wouldn’t have embarrassed him enough) was _my beautiful, my brilliant, so lovely._

Which was awfully generous, coming from someone who’d gotten his head wedged between a sofa and a ribcage and whose legs were almost certainly faster asleep than he was, due to being trapped under the rather solider bones of the bloke he was being so sympathetic about.

Equally generously deciding to live up to his name, Evander made sure Hogwarts’ one and only apprentice professor was only _almost_ late for his very first breakfast at the Staff Table.  And then, rather grudgingly, he gathered up his best-warded sketchbook and went off to talk to bloody Voldemort himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **To be continued:**  
>  While Hogwarts learns how good Severus is at being a New Hire, Lily dives headfirst into a sphere of politics everyone else was politely ignoring, and if Regulus hasn't figured out yet he's somebody's Intended, their mum sure has.  
>    
> Please review, even if you're not reading this close to post-date. I'll probably reply if I'm not too exhausted, it makes my day, and it reminds me there's an external reason to keep pushing to finish this story and dig into other bunnies. Enormous thanks to everyone who's been doing this already, and everyone who will.


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